Trouble in Toulouse

The Southern French industrial city of Toulouse has for years enjoyed a warm relationship between its left-leaning worker-priests and its liberal archbishop. Last week the alliance was severely ruptured, as six priests and a nun resigned their parish offices. The issue: celibacy. The occasion: the disciplining of a brother priest, Bernard Forestier, 29, for living with a young social worker named Cecile, 24.

Though many parishioners apparently knew of the liaison and were not disturbed by it, Cecile's parents did complain--to Toulouse's Archbishop Jean Guyot. In a gentle, anguished message read from Toulouse pulpits, Guyot said, "I wish I could remain silent," but reluctantly stated that priests who violate their vows of celibacy must consider themselves "relieved of their priestly functions." Thereupon, Forestier resigned, together with six of his colleagues in the working-class parish of St. Francis Xavier; the seven posted a statement of solidarity on their parish-house door. Though Forestier's comrades were somewhat embarrassed by the fact that the couple had scorned a civil marriage ceremony, they accepted the union as a genuine marriage. To deny any man the right to marry, they argued, reveals "the injustice and oppression of the men who run the church."

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