A retired French bishop is under investigation for what he called “inappropriate gestures” towards a woman several decades ago.
Monsignor Jean-Pierre Grallet, archbishop emeritus of Strasbourg, said in a statement published Wednesday he deeply regretted making “inappropriate gestures [gestes déplacés] toward a young woman of legal age” in the late 1980s.
The 81-year-old Franciscan religious said he had written to the woman in the summer of 2022, “to tell her that I had failed her and to ask her forgiveness.”
Grallet said he would now await the outcome of the canonical and civil investigations, and withdraw “from public speaking.”