Vatican restricts French priest following allegations he sexually abused therapy patients

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The Vatican has ordered a prominent French priest who has advised the Holy See for years on issues of sex and homosexuality to cease his practice of psychotherapy following allegations that he sexually abused men in the context of of his therapeutic care.

But the Vatican has not defrocked or sanctioned Reverend Tony Anatrella despite several well-documented complaints against him, further evidence of the Holy See’s reluctance to punish priests who abuse adults with the harshest measures, especially when the crimes happened a long time ago. .

Over the years, French and Catholic media have reported claims of several men and seminarians who were sent to Anatrella because they exhibited homosexual tendencies, only to then be allegedly subjected to sexualized therapy with him. Anatrella had been considered one of the Catholic Church’s foremost experts on homosexuality and had served as a consulting member of the Vatican’s family and health offices.

Church teaching considers homosexual acts to be “inherently disordered” and the Vatican in 2005 issued a policy aimed at preventing men with “deeply seated” homosexual tendencies from becoming priests.

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In a statement on Tuesday, the Archdiocese of Paris noted that French justice had not prosecuted Anatrella criminally because the allegations against him had exceeded the statute of limitations.

The statement said the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles abuse cases, issued an order against Anatrella after a church lawsuit initiated in 2016, to “immediately renounce all professional activity as a than a therapist”.

The Vatican has ordered a French priest to stop practicing psychotherapy after allegedly sexually abusing his patients. (FoxNews)

Additionally, the parish archdiocese has “formally requested” Anatrella, the author of more than a dozen books on gender studies, marriage and family life, to cease all publication, public ministry and participation in conferences. He forbade her to hear confession and asked her to lead a reserved life of prayer.

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The request, however, was only a “warning” “on pain of canonical sanctions”, suggesting that even the archdiocese was unwilling or unable to impose harsher sanctions on him. The Italian bishops’ conference newspaper, Avvenire, reported in 2018 that lawyers for Anatrella’s church maintained that he had committed no canonical crimes.

The Vatican has formulated norms to sanction priests who sexually abuse minors, up to and including secularizing them or removing them from the priesthood. And the Vatican routinely waives the statute of limitations for cases of child abuse. But the internal legal code of the Holy See has only recently begun to recognize abuse against adults, as well as the abuse of authority and spiritual abuse that often accompanies such crimes.

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Recently, another case made headlines involving a prominent Jesuit priest and artist, Reverend Marko Ivan Rupnik, who was accused by nine women of spiritual and sexual abuse dating back to the 1990s while helping to lead a religious community in Slovenia.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith refused to lift the statute of limitations in the case, even after saying a year earlier that Rupnik had been excommunicated for committing one of the most serious crimes in the Church, using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity.

Jesuits say Rupnik, whose mosaics decorate churches and basilicas around the world, remains under a restricted ministry.

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