French diocese paralysed as it awaits the fate of its bishop

Jun 17, 2023

By Matthieu Lasserre
It appears that no major decisions will be made in the southern French Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon until the Vatican finally decides the fate of Bishop Dominique Rey, its controversial leader.

The 70-year-old bishop, who has headed the diocese since 2000, was recently forced by the Vatican to suspend priestly ordinations for the second year in a row. Now he has indefinitely postponed a final vows ceremony for two sisters and a brother of the Fratérnité Eucharistein (Eucharistic Fraternity), one of the new ecclesial communities he welcomed into the diocese. The community was informed of the postponement on June 1, just 10 days before the three members were due to take their vows.

“Bishop Rey explained to me that the ecclesial context is tense with regard to new communities. He preferred to postpone the Mass,” the Eucharistein moderator told the cath.ch news website. “This is not a cancellation or a sanction” against the three future religious, he added, referring to a postponement of several months, without providing further details.

According to a diocesan source contacted by La Croix, the character of the members is not in question.
“Bishop Rey’s decision is logical and common sense,“ said the source. “As his discernment is being questioned by Rome, he is showing that he has understood the situation and is giving proof of common sense.”

The community, set up in Switzerland in 1996, and its founder, Fr Nicolas Buttet, had been implicated in 2021 when a Vatican investigation concluded that there were “instances of control and manipulation in the organisation of people’s time, down to the smallest detail of their activity and life”.

In particular, the investigators noted a lack of supervision on the part of Bishop Rey. Following the submission of the report to Rome, the fraternity reformed its governance and hoped to welcome new members this year.

Bishop Rey himself has been in the sights of the Vatican authorities for several months. In particular, he has been accused of ordaining priests without ensuring that they had received sufficiently solid training. Some seminarians previously rejected in other dioceses were then integrated into his diocesan seminary.

A canonical visitation took place in March 2023 to shed light on Bishop Rey’s governance. The results have not yet been made public. The Vatican took the rare disciplinary measure to suspend priestly ordinations in the diocese last year, a ban that was continued this year as well.

“This sanction will be applied until Bishop Rey’s future is sealed,” said a source close to the matter. --LCI (https:// international.la-croix.com/