French mother superior bullied nuns at Paris order: inquiry

The allegations against the nun who died in 2016 -- which do not include any suspected sexual abuse -- are the latest in a litany of accusations against French religious figures in recent years.

Mother Marie-Agnes was in 1969 elected head nun of the Benedictine Sisters of Montmartre, some of whom sing in the neighbourhood's Sacre Coeur Basilica.

A commission of inquiry interviewed 86 nuns and 28 former nuns to better assess the alleged mistreatment at the Montmartre community of Benedictine nuns from 1969 to the early 2010s.

During that period, Mother Marie-Agnes and her allies oversaw a system that spied on, bullied, physically abused and even stole money from the women who joined the order, according to its findings published Thursday.

Physical abuse included "forced and unbalanced meals" and "force-feeding to the point of vomiting", it said.

The mother superior and two aides recruited young women, hurrying them into saying their vows before they could change their minds, then cutting them off from their families.

They maintained their grip by listening in on their conversations with visitors and reading their personal letters, the report said.
'Police state'
They spied on, blackmailed and incited them to snitch, overworking or drugging the most rebellious into submission to keep them in line, the report said.

From 2004 to 2014, "it became a police state," it cited one of the nuns as saying.

It was not immediately clear how old Mother Marie-Agnes was when she died in 2016, but by then she had been a nun for more than five decades.

Management took over the women's financial assets as soon as they arrived, with the three in charge in some cases draining their savings accounts or seizing their inheritances to use them "for personal gain".

A total of more than 857,000 euros ($994,000) was withdrawn from the accounts of five sisters and the congregation, according to the report.

The three women meanwhile led a "lavish lifestyle", the report said, allegedly enjoying expensive meals, going on holiday to the French Riviera and making real estate investments for themselves in a village outside Paris.

In response to the report, the Paris diocese acknowledged it had, for many years, not properly carried out its "duty of vigilance".

The report is the latest in a series of allegations against the Church in France.

Among those that most shocked the country, more than 30 people have accused French charity icon Abbe Pierre of committing sexual abuse against them, some when they were children.

The authors of a book about him last year said the Vatican had known for decades about some of the allegations against the cleric, who died in 2007 aged 94.