‘Feet of clay’ – Grappling with the tragic reality of Jean Vanier

The news on the weekend that the late Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, had manipulative and abusive sexual relationships with at least six women will have shocked Catholics and others he inspired through his life; if someone who so many thought of as a living saint was not the real deal, then who is?

When Vanier died last May at the age of 90, tributes poured in from all over the world praising him for his work and wisdom in championing people on the margins of an increasingly technocratic society that celebrates people purely for what they can do rather than who they are. His most significant accomplishment, according to his obituary in the Canadian Globe and Mail, was “to establish the unique value of an intellectually disabled life”.

“In the laboratories of human transformation known as L’Arche houses, where residents live on equal footing and status with the assistants who help them, and where everyone sits down to at least one meal a day around a common table – a simple rite that defines the entire project – Mr. Vanier demonstrated that the able-bodied need the fragility of the intellectually disabled as much as, and probably more than, they need us,” it wrote.

L’Arche, a network of communities where people with and without learning disabilities live and work side by side, now numbers some 150 houses in 38 countries around the world, including several in the UK. Faith and Light, founded a few years after L’Arche in 1971 as a project to help the mentally challenged and their families find a place in the Church and society in general, has an even wider reach, with over 1,600 communities spread across more than 80 countries. Small wonder then, given these achievements, that Vanier was a regular nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as being named a Companion of the Order of Canada and honoured with the £1.1million Templeton Prize in 2015.

Now, however, admirers of Vanier, which include readers of his many books as well as members and friends of L’Arche and other organisations, have been left reeling by the news that a report due for release tomorrow accuses him of inappropriate sexual relationships between 1970 and 2005 with six adult, non-disabled women who had sought spiritual direction from him.

In a letter dated 22 February, the leaders of L’Arche international sent a letter to the Federation of L’Arche Communities, publishing the results of an inquiry they had commissioned from GCPS, an independent UK consultancy which specialises in improving procedures for abuse prevention and reporting, and with an independent oversight committee.

“The inquiry received credible and consistent testimonies from six adult women without disabilities, covering the period from 1970 to 2005,” the letter stated. “The women each report that Jean Vanier initiated sexual relations with them, usually in the context of spiritual accompaniment. Although they had no prior knowledge of each other’s experiences, these women reported similar facts associated with highly unusual spiritual or mystical explanations used to justify these behaviours. The relationships were found to be manipulative and emotionally abusive, and had a significant negative impact on their personal lives and subsequent relationships. These actions are indicative of a deep psychological and spiritual hold Jean Vanier had on these women and confirm his own adoption of some of Father Thomas Philippe’s deviant theories and practices.”

Fr Philippe, a Dominican priest who Vanier had thought of as his spiritual father, was barred from ministry in 1956 after women had given testimony against him. Historical research into previously unseen archives, conducted alongside the GCPS inquiry, found that – contrary to public claims – Vanier had known even in the 1950s about the key reasons for Fr Philippe’s trial and condemnation. In the 1950s, the research suggested, Vanier, Fr Philippe and a few women formed a small clandestine group which subscribed to and participated in, some of Fr Philippe’s “deviant sexual practices, which were founded on so-called ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual’ beliefs” that had been condemned by the Vatican.

“We are shocked by these discoveries and unreservedly condemn these actions, which are in total contradiction with the values Jean Vanier otherwise stood for,” wrote L’Arche International leaders Stephan Posner and Stacey Cates-Carney. “They are incompatible with the basic rules of respect and dignity of persons, and contrary to the fundamental principles on which L’Arche is based.”

They continued: “We recognize the courage and suffering of these women, and of any others who may not have spoken up. We also want to express our gratitude to the women who, by speaking out a few years ago about Father Thomas Philippe, helped others to liberate themselves of a burden of shame and suffering they did not deserve to be carrying. To all of them, we ask forgiveness for these events which took place in the context of L’Arche, some of which were caused by our founder.”

Accompanying their letter and a summary of the report’s findings was a timeline detailing the history of complaints about Vanier, the first of which was submitted in 2016, with Vanier telling an internal inquiry that he had believed his relationship with the woman had been consensual, and asking her forgiveness. In March 2019 the leadership was informed of a second testimony about a different relationship, and in April – just weeks before Jean Vanier died – they decided to assign the inquiry to an independent body.

L’Arche has submitted both the research project and the inquiry, which made no suggestion that Vanier had inappropriate relationships with any people with intellectual disabilities, to the Independent Church Sexual Abuse Commission in France (CIASE), and is undertaking a centralised whistleblowing procedure and a federation-wide evaluation of current safeguarding policies and procedures. “For many of us, Jean was one of the people we loved and respected the most,” the leaders wrote.

“Jean inspired and comforted many people around the world … and we are aware that this information will cause many of us, both inside and outside L’Arche, deep confusion and pain. While the considerable good he did throughout his life is not in question, we will nevertheless have to mourn a certain image we may have had of Jean and of the origins of L’Arche.”

 Speaking to The Tablet, Mr Posner pointed out that L’Arche is more than its founder. “We have been shocked, annoyed, disappointed,” he said. “But everyone I know in L’Arche goes back to their own experience, and says, ‘This is not what I have lived; and I still want to get up each morning and work for L’Arche.’ This is reassuring. That is all I can say.”

It is easy to spot parallels with other charismatic Catholic leaders of Vanier’s generation, especially ones who founded ‘new movements’ which are often seen as jewels in the modern Catholic crown, such as Fr Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Luis Fernando Figari, who founded the Sodalitium of Christian Life, and Fr Carlos Miguel Buena, founder of the Institute of the Incarnate Word. 

Such cases do untold harm, in the first place to the direct victims of the various founders, but also to all those who have followed and been inspired by them, as they are left feeling betrayed. Perhaps Jean Vanier did not foster the kind of personality cult that others perpetuated, but he was almost universally seen as a humble, kind, gentle and deeply holy individual whose words and deeds inspired countless numbers. That his reputation now lies in tatters is a cautionary tale, and a warning against putting anyone on pedestals, as well as a testimony to the Church’s usual reticence around speedy beatifications and canonisations – it can take time, after all, for the truth to come out.

Not, in a sense, that warnings against idolising any other Christian are any way new, as yesterday’s Epistle at Mass reminded us. “So there is nothing to boast about in anything human: Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life and death, the present and the future, are all your servants; but you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God,” it concluded. That letter, 1 Corinthians, had begun with an appeal for Church unity in Christ, and a caution against nailing our colours to the flags of such fellow Christians as Paul himself, the Alexandrian Apollos, or St Peter – Cephas. Christians belong to Christ alone, he stressed. 

And what of those who feel the credibility of the Church is damaged by such horrific revelations as those around Jean Vanier? If someone like Jean Vanier is not the paragon of virtue he seemed, what hope is there for ordinary people to live lives of goodness and holiness? What hope is there for anyone if someone who seemed so saintly should be found, in death, to be in desperate need of our prayers? There seems something diabolical in his abusive behaviour, which has wounded some and shaken so many more, but again, the Church has from the first sought to remind us that Christ himself was betrayed by people close to him, and that our faith must be in God alone. As Psalm 145 puts it:

“Put no trust in princes,

In mortal men in whom there is no help.

Take their breath, they return to clay

And their plans that day come to nothing.’

Finally, what of Jean Vanier’s many books, which include such modern classics as Becoming Humanand Community and Growth? Can anything be learned from them, or should they be ignored or cast aside, shaken off like dust? 

‘Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good,” wrote St Paul in 1 Thessalonians. Whatever genuine value there is in them has not gone away, and can usefully be thought of as God working through a profoundly sinful tool. It may be difficult to face Jean Vanier’s writings now, and we should never be able to read them without thinking of the women he abused and manipulated, but a time may come again when what value they have is once more apparent.