Cardinal Marc Ouellet Faces Legal Repercussions in Civil Court for Defamation and Damages

It's not exactly a lucky period for Cardinal Marc Ouellet. The former powerful Prefect of Bishops, after being accused of harassment by a woman in Canada (although he has always proclaimed his innocence), has now been ordered by a French civil court to pay damages to a nun who was essentially defamed and harmed by his decisions. It's the first time that a cardinal has been called to answer in solidarity by a civil court for an internal Church decision. It all started when Ouellet, as the head of the dicastery at the time, had assigned two inspectors (in this case, two nuns) the task of shedding light on the case of a conservative and traditionalist nun who had collided with her Dominican monastery. The civil court of Lorient has now established that Ouellet, along with the inspectors and the monastery itself, are guilty of having dismissed without just cause the fifty-seven-year-old nun Sabine Baudin de la Valette (whose religious name was Mother Marie Ferreol) from the traditionalist community of Pontcallec in Lorient in October 2020, after a full 34 years and without providing any reason to the unfortunate woman. In practice, Mother Marie Ferreol was left by her community and the Church on the street, without resources and without the right to find shelter for her old age. The nun's lawyer, Adeline Le Gouvello, pointed out that 'she wasn't even given the possibility to have a defense, and a lawyer.' The nun thus found herself powerless and without the possibility of defending herself as well as without a job, housing, or unemployment benefits. The damages calculated by the court and imposed on the defendants (and the religious order) amount to a full 300,000 euros. According to reports compiled by the two inspector nuns (who claim to have interviewed about 100 people during the 'visitation' period), tensions between the nuns had emerged and Mother Ferreol had been accused of manipulation and spiritual abuse. The newspaper 'La Croix' reported that the president of the civil court, Armelle Picard, criticized the Vatican for never having access to the dicastery's documents. The Vatican, through a lawyer, has stated that there is no right to access the confidential files. However, the lawyer for the dismissed nun confirmed that Mother Ferreol had been the target of 'serious abuses and crimes' within the community.