Priests in France will be required to carry QR codes that can reveal if they are facing a sexual abuse charge.
In a development that is “raising eyebrows”, the new ID cards, announced at the French Bishops’ Conference, can be scanned by a mobile phone, bringing up a green, orange or red light depending on the priest’s status and career history, said France 24.
Although the card’s main function is to show whether a priest is qualified to lead mass or hear confession, the red colour code would suggest that they may have faced sexual abuse charges, meaning the cards “can in effect be used by Catholics to find out whether bishops, deacons and priests in their area are possible sex offenders”, said The Telegraph.
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In a statement announcing the new system, the Catholic Church said it would “intensify the fight against sexual violence in the Church”. The bishop of Troyes, a town east of Paris, called it a “cultural shift”.
However, a group representing survivors of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church was critical of the initiative. François Devaux, a former president of La Parole Libérée, described the proposal as “one of the Catholic Church’s top three most stupid ideas” and said that “this new ineptitude is a sign of the Church’s idleness”.
“If we have to scan the QR codes of clergy members to reassure Catholics, it means the Church has hit a new low,” he said, adding that the measure is “nothing more than a publicity stunt”.
In 2021, an inquiry found that some 216,000 children, mostly boys, had been sexually abused by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950. The investigation found that there were at least 2,900 to 3,200 abusers, and accused the Church of showing a “cruel indifference towards the victims”, said the BBC.
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