the victims of Father Ribes ask the diocese to speed up the removal of his works
The diocese of Lyon had committed last year that the works of the artist priest who died in 1994 be taken down, after 49 victims of rape and sexual assault during their childhood were affected.
“We expect the diocese to keep its word, they communicated a year agobut the implementation is not very fast”. The group of victims of Father Louis Ribes, which brings together 25 of the 49 victims of pedophile abuse by artist priest who died in 1994, asks the archdiocese to speed up the stalling of his works, which are numerous in the churches of the Lyon region. All the paintings signed RIB have been removed, we answer rue Adolphe Max, recalling that the removal of the stained glass windows is more complex.
It remains today in six churches of the Rhone. In the case of the first five (Loire-sur-Rhône, Dième, Sainte-Catherine, Charly and Givors), the buildings predate 1905 and therefore belong to the municipalities. A person in charge of this file in the diocese thus wrote to the mayors concerned in February 2022, assures the diocese, “by specifying that we have chosen to remove all the works from our property and our responsibility at the request of the victims”. A missive in which the financial involvement of the Church would have been guaranteed.
Frying on the line?
But the communication sometimes seems to have been difficult to establish, after several interlocutors, in particular on the side of Charly, commune of 4400 souls in the south of the Lyon area, targeted at the beginning of the week by a petition against the 11 RIB-signed virals within his church. Mayor LR of the town says “having discovered in the press» the financial commitment of the diocese at that time. “I have become attached to them since yesterday”, says Olivier Araujo. The elected official, however, claims to have discussed at length with the victims and the parishioners since the revelation of the case. A meeting is also scheduled for Thursday in the town, said the mayor to the Figarorecalling in passing the importance of such a project for his municipality.
The situation would be more advanced in Loire-sur-Rhône, with an estimate drawn up by a master glassmaker for work during the summer, assures the diocese, as well as in Sainte-Catherine. Luc Gemet victim of Louis Ribes asks “proofs”and tells how the sight of these eight stained glass windows “very figurative” in this last commune had made him relive his trauma. “They dated from the period when I was a victim and I saw him again in his workshop making his models, taking a break as soon as possible to attack me”says the one who is now approaching his sixties.
“Rape of children aged 7 or 8”
Half a century after the facts, confirmed by the diocese and the Ciase, he explains how “Any victim who sees his stained glass windows finds himself immersed in what he experienced during his childhood. We are talking about rape on children of 7 or 8 years old, with one in two people who makes a suicide attempt.. The choice of the municipality of Dième, in the mountains of Lyonnais, to only hide the three signature letters therefore seems incomprehensible to him.
Finally, in Givors, the file is still at the discussion stage according to the diocese. And to mention the technical difficulties specific to each site, due to the type of sealing, scaffolding or temperatures that are too low to act in winter, which delay operations. To this must be added administrative difficulties for the church of Saint-Côme and Saint-Damien in Caluire, the sixth concerned, which belongs to the diocese but is under emphytized lease for the benefit of the Orthodox Church.
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