By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — More than a decade after the Community of the Beatitudes publicly acknowledged its founder and several other leaders were guilty of sexual abuse, and it began a radical restructuring of the community’s governance, Pope Francis welcomed members of the group’s general council to the Vatican.
According to the Vatican press office, the pope gave members of the group the text of a speech he had prepared but did not read at the audience April 17.
While photographs show the pope speaking to the group, the Vatican did not share what the pope said.
In his prepared text, Pope Francis said the group’s charism was “a gift for the church and the world” and praised the group’s vision of community life, which is a reminder that “we are not called upon to be alone, but to walk together, helping each other in faith and in the love of God. This is the strength of consecrated life: the sharing of fraternal life, prayer and service to one’s neighbor.”
The Community of the Beatitudes, part of the charismatic renewal movement, was founded in France in 1973 by two Protestant couples who desired to live as the first Christians did. The primary founder, Gerard Croissant, was a Protestant minister who became a Catholic and was ordained a permanent deacon in 1978.
In 2002, the organization — consisting of consecrated men, consecrated women and laypeople, including families — was given official recognition by the Vatican.
In 2011 the community publicly acknowledged Croissant had committed “crimes against the moral law of the church,” including “serious failures” in sexual matters, particularly with consecrated women in the community and at least one girl under the age of 18.
At the time, the community said the first signs of “fragility and error” began to appear in the movement in 2002. In addition to acts of abuse, it cited “unbalanced psycho-spiritual practices,” a confusion between consecrated and lay status of members, and problems of governance.
In 2007 the Vatican outlined a restructuring program for the movement, reconstituting it as a community of diocesan right, under the canonical authority of the archbishop of Toulouse, France. In 2010, in the face of continual internal divisions, the Vatican named Dominican Father Henry Donneaud to take charge of the organization and complete the process of internal reconciliation. Father Donneaud continues to serve as the group’s “apostolic assistant” and was at the audience with the pope.
After developing a new set of statutes for the group, in 2020 the Community of the Beatitudes was established as an “ecclesial family of consecrated life,” a form that recognizes differences in the rules regulating the lives of the consecrated and lay members sees them as a single community with the same spirituality and mission.
According to the community’s website, the group has houses in 27 countries; the sole U.S. community is in Denver.
