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Paris, France, Nov 26, 2021 / 12:12 pm (CNA).
Archbishop Michel Aupetit has asked Pope Francis to decide whether he should remain as the Catholic archbishop of Paris, according to French media reports.
The 70-year-old archbishop, who was installed in the French capital in 2018, told the Catholic daily La Croix that he had written to the pope out of a concern to preserve the unity of his archdiocese.
“The word ‘resignation’ is not the one I used,” he said. “Resignation would mean that I am abandoning my office. In reality, I am handing it over to the Holy Father because it is he who gave it to me.”
He added: “I did it to preserve the diocese, because as a bishop I must be at the service of unity.”
Aupetit, who had a late vocation to the priesthood after working as a doctor, was speaking after the French weekly magazine Le Point published a report portraying him as an authoritarian and divisive figure.
The report also raised concerns about Aupetit’s contacts with a woman dating back to 2012, when he was vicar general of Paris archdiocese.
Aupetit told Le Point that he was not in a relationship with the woman.
He said: “My behavior towards her may have been ambiguous, thus suggesting the existence between us of an intimate relationship and sexual relations, which I strongly refute … I decided not to see her again and I informed her.”
Aupetit told La Croix that he had spoken to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Bishops, about his situation, as well as to Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the apostolic nuncio to France.
“This is not because of what I should or should not have done in the past — otherwise I would have left a long time ago — but to avoid division, if I myself am a source of division,” he said.
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Duty to his post is much more than unity, if unity means conscientiously blanketing his convictions, nor is division a justifiable rationale for forfeiting his duty if his good convictions are the cause. And Archbishop Aupetit [who should be cardinal for France’s capital diocese] has convictions that are good. Convictions more identifiable with Christ than many other bishops who align with the spirit of the age. Christ’s own words are, I did not come into the world to create peace, but division, to stir a father against son, and son against father. If anyone loves father or mother, son or daughter more than me is unworthy of me. Especially in today’s world as divisions within Catholicism stand we’re called to hold fast to what is true and just.
La Croix is not considered by French Real Deal Catholics to be a Catholic Daily. In 1976 Mgr Lefevbre in an interview explained that the freemason editor was formenting division in France throughout the council which led to the Grand Orient orchestrated Phallic Revolution of 1968. A strange place to communicate a desire for unity with French Catholics: the no1 French masonic tool of smashing French Catholicism and spreading anticatholic hatred and Marxist ideologies.
Let it be clear, I feel sorry for Mgr AUPETIT who is yet one more Victim of the Legacy of Vatican 2. One more of the millions. Everything the Spirit of that Council touches turns into a Pillar of Salt. And lets face the truth: the modernist fiasco screams to heaven for vengeance louder than Sodom.
Sigh…one cannot know all the undercurrents, but Abp. Aupetit is noted in Cardinal Pell’s PRISON JOURNAL as papabilie, a “worthy possibility.” ( p.131) Might this froth of “disunity” be a preemptive strike?
Cdl. Pell’s judgement carries weight. I’ll go with that.