Author: Massimo Introvigne, Centro studi sulle nuove religioni (Center for Studies in New Religions) - Personal Website, Wikipedia

Abstract: »The death in 2019 of Jean Vanier, the celebrated founder of L’Arche communities for the disabled, set in motion a series of events where the case involving a secret society of Catholic Dominican priests, nuns, and laypersons practicing heterodox erotic rituals, which the Holy Office had judged in secret in 1956, was rediscovered. Vanier was part of the secret society, together with two famous Dominican theologians, the brothers Thomas and Marie-Dominique Philippe, their sister Cécile, a Dominican nun, and other nuns and lay Catholics. The chapter adopts a distinction between cases (which remain known to limited circles), scandals (which reach the public opinion and are unanimously interpreted according to certain frames), and affairs (scandals whose interpretation is not unanimous but contested). It then follows the Philippe-Vanier incident in its evolution from case, dealt with but successfully hidden from the public opinion by the Holy See in the 1950s, to scandal in the 21st century. I suggest that the frames currently applied to the scandal, “sexual abuses” and “cultic deviances” (dérives sectaires), may need to be integrated by referring to a long tradition of sacred eroticism rituals practiced in clandestine Catholic circles, thus making the interpretation of the scandal less unanimous and perhaps eventually converting it into an affair.« (Source: Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of France | Catholic Church: Catholic charities / L'Arche | Sex and the law: Sexual violence / Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals in France, Jean Vanier