Jacques Gaillot


Jacques Jean Edmond Georges Gaillot is a French Catholic clergyman and social activist. He was Bishop of Évreux in France from 1982 to 1995. In 1995, Pope John Paul II removed him as head of his diocese because he publicly expressed controversial and heterodox positions on religious, political and social matters.
These views earned him the popular nickname of The Red Cleric.

Early years

Jacques Gaillot was born in Saint-Dizier, Haute-Marne, on 11 September 1935. He decided to become a priest while still a teenager. After his secondary studies, he entered the seminary in Langres.
From 1957 to 1959, he performed his compulsory military service in Algeria during the war of independence.
In Rome from 1960 to 1962 he completed his studies in theology and earned his bachelor's degree. He was ordained a priest in 1961. From 1962 to 1964, he studied at the Higher Institute for Liturgy in Paris and taught at the major seminary in Châlons-en-Champagne.
Beginning in 1965, he was a professor at the regional seminary of Reims. He chaired many sessions to implement the principles and policies established in the documents produced by the Second Vatican Council.
In 1973, he was assigned to the parish of St Dizier in his home town and became co-manager of the institute for the training of seminary instructors in Paris. In 1977, he was appointed vicar general of the Diocese of Langres. In 1981, he was elected vicar capitular.

Bishop of Évreux

On 5 May 1982, Pope John Paul II appointed him Bishop of Évreux. He received his episcopal consecration on 20 June from Léon Aimé Taverdet, Bishop of Langres.
During his first Easter message he wrote: "Christ died outside the walls as he was born outside the walls. If we are to see the light, the sun, of Easter, we ourselves must go outside the walls." Following this he then stated that: "I'm not here to convince the convinced or take care of the well. I'm here to support the ill and offer a hand to the lost. Does a bishop remain in his cathedral or does he go into the street?...I made my choice." Within months Gaillot had begun to act on his word.
In 1983, he supported a conscientious objector in Évreux who declined to perform alternative service in forestry because it did not contribute to relief of the destitute or promoting peace. During the yearly assembly of the episcopate, he was one of the two bishops voting against the episcopate's text on nuclear deterrence, which supported having nuclear arms as a legitimate deterrent.
In 1984 he angered numerous Catholic authorities by refusing to support the movement in defence of French parochial schools.
In 1985, he supported the First Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and met Yasser Arafat in Tunis, being embraced by the future Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in a private audience. Perhaps the most notable event he performed in 1987 was attending, by invitation, a special session of the United Nations in New York to speak out for disarmament. The first amount of considerable media attention paid to Gaillot came in January 1985 when he signed an appeal on behalf of underpaid Catholic school teachers; also signing the appeal was Georges Marchais, the head of the French Communist Party. This proved to be highly controversial, bringing about the start of a right-wing campaign against Bishop Gaillot. Within his own diocese, Le Figaro spearheaded the campaign. At this point Bishop Gaillot was described as being "a tool of the church's worst enemies".
In 1987, he went to South Africa to meet a young anti-apartheid militant from Évreux sentenced to four years in prison by the South African régime. There he also appeared at a demonstration where some Communist militants were also demonstrating. In order to accomplish this trip, he had to renounce going with the diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes, a move that attracted criticism. Further, in the same year he also announced that the French Bishops "remain too preoccupied by the correct functioning of the church and its structures." This only ensured that the responses to Gaillot when he later attacked the right-wing French political party, the National Front, were even stronger. Also in 1987 Gaillot traveled to Athens to show solidarity with a boatload of Palestinian refugees.
In 1988, during a closed-door session of the assembly in Lourdes, he advocated the ordination of married men to the priesthood. After the proceedings had finished Gaillot spoke to the press about the discussions held and also promoted his own viewpoints. By promoting a revision of clerical celibacy and the use of condoms, he caused considerable tension with the French bishops' conference, the situation being exacerbated by the fact that in speaking to the media about the session, Gaillot had violated convention regarding assembly conclaves. He later defended his previous actions, remarking that "I never broke the vow of celibacy... I only questioned it. But that's worse." Also that year, Gaillot took the unprecedented step for a Roman Catholic bishop of blessing a homosexual union in a "service of welcoming", after the couple requested it in view of their imminent death from AIDS.
In 1989, Galliot participated in a trip to French Polynesia organized by the peace movement, asking for the end to French nuclear testing.
He also participated in the ceremony of the transfer of the ashes of the late bishop Baptiste-Henri Grégoire to the Panthéon, a necropolis for the great men of France. Grégoire had been instrumental in the first abolition of slavery, and the end of discrimination against Blacks and Jews during the French Revolution. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church had refused to give him the last sacraments because of Grégoire's acceptance of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Gaillot was the only French bishop participating in this ceremony.
The French journalist Henri Tincq wrote in Le Monde that Gaillot "has the merit of saying out loud what many people in authority in the church think deep down".
In 1989, the French Bishops' Conference, to the extent that the members of the episcopate voted to censure him after Gaillot gave an interview to the publication Lui, a publication known for its explicit sexual content. He also gave interviews to leading gay magazines and criticized his peers as incompetent to judge the circumstances of gays and lesbians. Gaillot offered to resign but the Vatican did not respond.
Toward late 1989, he made a conciliatory gesture by signing a promise of "loyalty" and "docility" to the papal authority. A week later, Gaillot appeared on television and spoke of the "feeble state of internal debate in the church" and express disappointment that progress had not been made since the Second Vatican Council.
In 1991, he opposed the Gulf War, publishing a book called Open letter to those who preach war, but let it be waged by others. He also condemned the embargo on Iraq. By the end of 1991, the French Bishops' Conference had censured Gaillot three times, most recently for his intervention in Haiti, rousing support for Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Gaillot's book A Rant on Exclusion was published in March 1994. It criticized the French laws on immigration proposed by Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua.
On 12 April 1994, Gaillot appeared on television in a discussion with dissident Catholic theologian Eugen Drewermann. On 14 April, Archbishop Joseph Duval, President of the Bishops Conference of France, wrote to Gaillot: "For all to see you are in solidarity with Drewermann. But how do you show your solidarity with us, your fellow episcopal brothers and the Pope? Are you aware that your position is unsustainable? The distance from your brothers in the episcopate that you emphasize makes us suffer and has become a scandal for many Catholics." Gaillot at one point offered to resign, but withdrew his offer, fearing that the Vatican might resolve his case as it had that of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in 1987 by appointing an auxiliary bishop with special authority.
Gaillot was the target of a bitter campaign to disparage his name. Unsubstantiated allegations of homosexuality, racism, anti-Semitism, and psychosis and neurosis were made by highly placed authorities in the French hierarchy. Gaillot responded by calling Duval an "ayatollah" seeking to impose "ideological uniformity" within the French Bishops Conference. He compared the leadership style of Cardinal Bernadin Gantin, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, to that of the Stasi, the East German security police.

Removal from Évreux

Gantin summoned Gaillot to a meeting at the Vatican on 13 January 1995 and offered the choice of resigning his see and becoming bishop emeritus of Évreux or being removed from his office. Gaillot returned to France and issued a statement that said: "I was asked to hand in my resignation, which I thought I had good reasons to refuse." As all bishops need to be assigned to a see, whether one that they administer or one to which they have only the relationship established by their title to it–a titular see–he was assigned the titular see of Parthenia, in accordance with standard practice for a bishop without real administrative responsibilities, used routinely for auxiliary bishops, officials of the Roman Curia, and senior diplomats of the Holy See.
The Church named two bishops to stay in contact with Gaillot.

Reaction to removal

This removal sparked an emotional response from thousands of people across France and the rest of the world. Twenty thousand people, including Gaillot's own mother, attended Bishop Gaillot's last mass at the Cathedral in Évreux and stayed on the streets protesting the Vatican's decision. Protestors united under the leadership of the Communist mayor of the region and marched on the streets in the rain. With the Cathedral full, many people stayed outside for the bishop's last mass. Still being a bishop he left his cross, mitre and staff behind in Évreux.
The choice to remove Bishop Gaillot as ordinary of Évreux was widely seen as a mistake by both lay people and clergy, and also by many non-religious people who had come to view Gaillot favorably. After his removal, a reported forty thousand people wrote letters to the Cathedral office at Évreux, with more being sent to the Vatican and eminent prelates. He was perceived favorably by a significant number of people, particularly due to his ministry to all people without distinction. In addition, he had become a national figure after the sanctions taken against him.
Official polls taken at the time consistently revealed the French public to be against the punishment brought upon Gaillot. One CSA survey showed that total of 64 percent of the public were against the firing of Jacques Gaillot as bishop of Évreux, with only 11 percent approving of his firing and a remaining 25 percent being undecided. Some later polls showed that support for Gaillot might even have been as high as 75 percent.
Reaction from other French bishops varied. No French bishop expressed public support for Gaillot, but the spokesperson for the hierarchy reported that both Cardinal Robert-Joseph Coffy of Marseille and Archbishop Duval were "visibly troubled" by the Vatican's action. Duval released a statement that said: "I pleaded for patience in Rome". Duval later said that he "regretted" what Rome had done and called it "an authoritarian act which cannot be accepted by society, even if it is carried out by the Church".
The Archbishop of Cambrai,, defended Gaillot and called his removal "a wound for our church... a source of misunderstanding for the poor and for all those who seek the truth and who put their trust in the church."
By the time he left office at the Diocese of Évreux he had visited more prisons than any bishop in France's history.

After Évreux

After being removed from his position as prelate of Évreux, Bishop Gaillot wrote the following comment:
After leaving the Bishop's Palace, Gaillot immediately moved in with illegal squatters in Paris' infamous Rue de Dragon. Since then he has shown similar solidarity with the homeless. Bishop Gaillot continues to defend human rights and engage in activism, regularly publishing information about his activities on the website of Partenia.
He remains active as a pastor to the excluded. He also travels throughout France and also internationally, spreading the word of the Christian Gospel and defending those who are considered "outcasts". He is an avid anti-war protester and is considered by many to be a strong socialist. Gaillot had a strong friendship with Abbé Pierre.
In 1995, after his removal as Bishop of Évreux, Gaillot attended a Call to Action conference in Detroit as one of the keynote speakers. He held three sessions, proving to be popular despite speaking through a translator. He hosted the conference alongside other controversial Catholic theologians including Professor Hans Küng and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton.
The removal of his responsibility over a specific geographical diocese permitted Gaillot to be even more daring in his activism. In 1995 following his removal, Bishop Gaillot engaged in protests regarding the policy of French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia. Gaillot went with a fleet of protest ships, being on the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior, he was subsequently removed from the ship by French commandos, given that Rainbow Warrior had sailed within the exclusion zone, and escorted back to the atoll.
Twice bishops prohibited Gaillot from speaking in their dioceses. In 2000, Pope John Paul II forbade his participation in a conference in Rome about religion and homosexuals. Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne banned Gaillot from addressing a World Youth Day event in Bonn in 2004 called subject of "Being a Christian in the Third Millennium: A Faith which has Hope".
Also in 2004 Bishop Gaillot met with Maryam Rajavi, a controversial Iranian political activist. Gaillot strongly criticised the actions of some extremist religious leaders in Iran, going on to comment that “One must not forget that the strength of truth will make it triumphant. Darkness will give way and truth will prevail despite all the lies and ruses”. Rajavi publicly thanked the bishop and expressed that his support had been very effective in promoting the cause of the Iran resistance.
Gaillot has also taken position as a well-known public figure in France, fighting for a number of causes; Gaillot serves as the co-chairman of one of France's foremost human rights activist groups, , among other groups.
In 2007 Gaillot expanded his use of the internet by posting a video interview on the website Google Video, attempting to bring attention to the escalating violence in Darfur.
A book released shortly after his removal from Évreux was Voice From the Desert: A Bishop's Cry for a New Church''. It was a largely autobiographical discussion of the events surrounding his removal.
He has expressed his support for euthanasia and same-sex marriage, when it was legalized in France.

Réconciliation with Church authorities

In 2000, Louis-Marie Billé, Archbishop of Lyon and president of the French Bishops Conference, invited Gaillot to attend a national ecumenical service in Lyon on 14 May alongside other senior members of the French hierarchy. Billé said the invitation came from the bishops as a group: "It is important that Catholics, and public opinion in general, are aware that the communion that links us as brothers is real, even when it is lived out in a special fashion. What happened five years ago remains a wound even for those who don't necessarily share Mgr Gaillot's opinions." There was no indication that the Pope or anyone in the Roman Curia was involved. Gaillot accepted, writing that he was "happy to demonstrate my communion with the Church".
On 1 September 2015, shortly before his 80th birthday, Gaillot, accompanied by Daniel Duigou, a priest and former journalist, met privately with Pope Francis in his Vatican City residence for 45 minutes. Gaillot said the pontiff encouraged him to continue his activism on behalf of migrants and refugees. After the meeting, Gaillot said he was “in love” with Francis.