A priest in central France accused of sexually assaulting a minor committed suicide in his church, Catholic authorities said Monday, the second French priest to take his life over abuse claims in a month.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Yves Fumery, 38, hanged himself in his presbytery in the town of Gien in the Loire valley. His body was found on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The public prosecutor for the area, Loic Abrial, told\u00a0AFP<\/em>\u00a0he had been questioned last week by police about allegations of sexual assault involving a child under the age of 15.<\/p>\n Fumery had not been formally charged but was under investigation because of reports from the community about his behaviour, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n Orleans bishop Jacques Blaquart, whose diocese includes Gien, called it a \u201cmoment of suffering and a tragic ordeal\u201d.<\/p>\n Blaquart said some members of Fumery\u2019s parish had brought attention to the priest\u2019s \u201cinappropriate behaviour\u201d towards children aged 13, 14 and 15, including a girl \u201cthat he took in his arms and drove home several times.\u201d<\/p>\n The bishop said the nature of the claims did not require the diocese to report the priest to the authorities and that he had told Fumery to \u201ctake a step back\u201d, seek counselling and leave town for a little while.<\/p>\n The priest took his advice and returned to Gien after a short break but had not yet resumed his duties, Blaquart said.<\/p>\n He is the second priest in over a month to commit suicide in similar circumstances.<\/p>\n On September 19, Jean-Baptiste Sebe, also aged 38, hanged himself in his church in the northern city of Rouen after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her adult daughter.<\/p>\n No formal complaint had been made at the time of his death.<\/p>\n The Catholic Church has been shaken by a string of paedophile scandals over the past 25 years.<\/p>\n The most senior French Catholic cleric to be caught up in scandal is Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who is to go on trial in January for allegedly covering up for a priest accused of abusing boy scouts in the Lyon area in the 1980s.<\/p>\n (AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A priest in central France accused of sexually assaulting a minor committed suicide in his church, Catholic authorities said Monday, the second French priest to take his life over abuse claims in a month. Pierre-Yves Fumery, 38, hanged himself in his presbytery in the town of Gien in the Loire valley. His body was found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1766,1764,1765],"class_list":["post-2386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-catholic","tag-pierre-yves-fumery","tag-priest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2388,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386\/revisions\/2388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}