Installed as Archbishop of Toulouse on January 30, 2022, Guy de Kerimel is in turmoil. His former diocese of Grenoble-Vienne is shaken by a case of sexual abuse. Father Louis Ribes, priest and artist who died in 1994, is accused by dozens of people of sexual assault and rape, committed when they were children, from the Loire to Isère via the Rhône.

Bishop of the diocese of Grenoble-Vienne between 2006 and 2021, Guy de Kerimel was informed in 2016 of the report of a first victim, attacked in the 1980s. Five years later, another victim, abused by the priest in the 1980s. 1970, will obtain an appointment with the bishop. “I met a businessman who didn’t have much time,” she confides to Mediacités, stunned by the lack of consideration reported by the religious leader.

The two victims express their desire to find the photos and sketches of them that the artist-priest carefully kept in his office at the Vienne-Estressin seminary, where he died. In 2016, the diocese of Lyon was questioned about the career of Father Ribes and the archives consulted. But everything was destroyed when the priest died, the religious authorities said at the time. “What more could we do? “, defended himself on January 25, 2022 the now new Archbishop of Toulouse with France 3 Auvergne Rhône Alpes.

However, no serious investigation has been carried out to trace the priest’s pedophile course. More troubling, his artistic career is described in a book by the Diocesan Association of Sacred Art of Lyon, published in 2020. Finally, it was not until the beginning of last January that the dioceses concerned finally published an appeal to testimonies, after the media coverage of a victim’s story and while Mediacités was conducting the investigation.

Since then, the affair of the “Picasso of the churches” has broken out and new victims are declaring themselves every week. Like this Thursday, January 27, in Vienna, where the diocese organized a public meeting. “The steps were not up to par,” acknowledged that day the vicar general, Loïc Lagadec, who is in charge of the interim. Guy de Kerimel, he was not deemed necessary to come and meet his former parishioners. Perhaps he will have a prayer for them during his installation mass this Sunday at the Saint-Étienne cathedral in Toulouse.