CV NEWS FEED // Trial dates have been named in the case brought against the Missionary Family of Notre-Dame (FMND) and its Superior Father Bernard Domini, who have been accused of violating a recently-amended French “anti-cult” law.
According to latest reports, the Privas Criminal Court on Aug. 1 rejected all exceptions of nullity raised by Father Bernard’s lawyers during its initial July 4 hearing. The court scheduled further proceedings and ordered additional information be brought forth.
A three-day trial is now set to take place from Sept. 24 to 26, 2025.
The FMND is being charged under the French Criminal Code, Article 223-15-2, which prohibits “the fraudulent abuse of the state of ignorance or the situation of weakness” of a minor or other vulnerable person, for the purpose of “lead[ing] that minor or person to act or abstention that is seriously detrimental to him.”
Violations of the law are ordinarily punishable by up to three years imprisonment and a 375,000 euro fine. However, if the offense is committed through an online or digital communication platform, the penalties may be increased to seven years of imprisonment and a 1 million euro fine.
“Contrary to what the act of prosecution claims in an ubuesque way, the Missionary Family of Notre-Dame vigorously disputes having sought to ‘recruit’ ‘fragile young people,’” the FMND said in a statement following the July 4 hearing. “In religious life, we don’t recruit! It is the person concerned who responds to a call from God.”
“Above all, religious superiors are not looking for fragile religious – we do not know what the purpose would be! – but on the contrary for balanced subjects, because religious life, a source of inner freedom, is demanding,” the statement continued: “The reality is that most of our members entered the Community after higher education or professional life experience.”
“As for the five complainants,” the FMNS wrote:
One was never a member of the Religious Community; the other stayed there for ten days and was asked to leave because it was not made for religious life; the third was refused commitments by unanimous decision of the Council and had had previous problems in other Communities; the fourth did not understand that the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience were wishes she made to God himself and that they committed him; and the fifth left behind a Home in great suffering, because of his brutal ways of acting as the head of this Home.
The FMND further condemned media reports that suggest the community had driven several members to commit suicide, an accusation the FMND described as “totally false.”
“One of the complainants even said, in the file, that a member had committed suicide while he is alive!” the statement added.
Moreover, the FMND complained that its accusers had been heard by the court on “hundreds of pages without their inconsistencies being noted,” while Father Bernard was only heard on 25 pages and that this had been done before the submission of accusations against him, making it impossible for him to respond substantially.
Ultimately, the religious congregation claims that the plaintiffs’ case is part of a wider agenda to both hinder the construction of FMND’s Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to target the religious community itself, “making no secret of their anticlericalism.”
In October 2023, a video of one of the congregation’s “based” nuns went viral. The video shows her tackling a climate activist who was protesting the Church’s construction.
According to a recent press release from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination in Europe, reports from experts solicited by case investigators and France’s Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Drifts (MIVILUDES) “went far beyond the investigation of potential abuse of weakness and instead presented some of the basic principles of the Catholic faith as ‘psychological subjection.’”
The reports submitted on behalf of the plaintiffs to the court presented the congregation’s vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as “intended to reinforce the feeling of belonging and the process of identification.” The reports also stated that “silence imposed at certain times of the day and the prayers are a way of reaffirming their submission.”
The expert witness’ reports further characterized prayer as “magical thought” and that Church teachings on heaven and hell are “false data in order to lose all objectivity and keep them under control.”
