French Catholic priests will be forced to wear a scannable QR code so the public can identify if they are sex offenders
- Priests in France will be required to wear coded identification cards at traffic lights
- Cards indicate whether the holder has been stripped of clerical status
Catholic priests in France will be forced to wear coded identification tags by traffic lights to allow the public to check whether they may have been accused of sexual abuse.
The cards will include a QR code, scannable by mobile phone, which will signal a red, orange or green light depending on whether or not its holder has been stripped of clerical status.
The program, announced Wednesday by the Episcopal Conference of France, will make it easier to identify priests capable of leading Mass and hearing confessions.
But it also aims to protect worshipers from sexual abuse, an issue made more pressing by revelations in November that 11 former French or incumbent bishops had been accused of abuse or had failed to report cases.
French bishop Alexandre Joly shows his identity card during a press conference as part of the Conference of Bishops of France in Paris, May 10, 2023
Members of the public will see either a red light, an amber light or a green light when scanning one of the new cards.
Red lights indicate that a priest has been stripped of his status and cannot perform various clerical duties.
The database will be updated as standard once a year, or immediately in the event of serious misconduct.
Orange lights will indicate that a priest has limited powers due to experience or sanctions.
Green lights will indicate that a priest is authorized to perform a full range of sacraments.
The system is designed to support existing paper documents used by the Catholic Church in France as it attempts to crack down on sexual abuse within its ranks.
In November 2022, 11 bishops were accused of sexual abuse or cover-up within the French Catholic Church.
Among those facing criminal or canonical proceedings was the former Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard.
He admitted to having “behaved in a reprehensible way towards a 14-year-old girl” when he was a priest, more than three decades ago.
Following a two-and-a-half-year investigation, an independent body report published on October 4, 2021 detailed a long history of abuse within the church, estimating that 330,000 had been abused over a 70-year period.
As part of the new system, the public will be able to scan the QR code to check the status of a priest
The program was voted on by the bishops in November 2021 in light of the findings of the damning Sauvé report, named after its leader.
Some 17,000 people will receive identity documents called ‘Celebrets’ under this scheme.
Despite efforts, not everyone is influenced. Olivier Savignac, co-founder of Parler et revivre, an organization collecting the words of victims, said: “The Catholic Church in France is aging. There are many people of a certain age who oversee religious ceremonies.
“Do they have the skills and the training? Because you have to flash a QR code, it’s quite technical.’
