A Catholic priest in France is being investigated for the rape of a minor, according to the Paris public prosecutor’s office on Thursday.
The clergyman in his fifties from western France was remanded.
He was also alleged to have administered drugs to the assaulted teenager without his knowledge at the beginning of November.
According to French media reports, the victim is a 15-year-old, whom the priest had met through a dating app.
The diocese of Rennes, where the priest came from, reacted with dismay, Archbishop Pierre d’Ornellas expressed sympathy and support for the victim.
Earlier, another abuse scandal caused a stir in the French Catholic Church.
Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the former president of France’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference, admitted to abusing a 14-year-old girl in the 1980s.
He was also under investigation by authorities.
A study presented in October 2021 concluded that, since the 1950s, an estimate of 216,000 children and young people had been victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France.
Including all institutions operated by the church, the number of victims was assumed to be around 330,000.(dpa)
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