The timing of events renders the matter particularly delicate. On 27 September, Pope Leo XIV is to meet in Lourdes with victims of sexual violence within the Church. Yet, among the priests currently tasked with welcoming and accompanying pilgrims at the Shrine is Argentinian Father Gabriel Ghilardini, who in 2020 faced a serious accusation in his country. Writing in Le Canard Enchaîné, Emmanuel Savoye notes « indefatigable curés… » and, moreover, the Shrine itself makes no attempt to conceal his presence: Gabriel Ghilardini appears with his photograph and name in the official list of the community of chaplains.
These priests, who come from various countries, minister to pilgrims, above all for celebrations and confessions.
The case dates back to 6 April 2020. An Argentine, Eugenia Castagnaro, then aged 31, lodged a complaint against Gabriel María Ghilardini, accusing him of a sexual assault that she alleged had occurred in 2000 at Capilla del Señor in the province of Buenos Aires, when she was 12 years old. The file was registered under reference IPP-18-03-000427-20/00 before investigating unit no. 3 in Campana. The Argentinian ecclesiastical authorities took the matter sufficiently seriously to impose precautionary measures: the diocese of Nueve de Julio suspended Ghilardini from his duties as parish administrator and forbade him from exercising his ministry in public. One essential point must be stressed, however: Gabriel Ghilardini has never been convicted.
On 23 October 2020, Judge Julio Andrés Grassi, of the Guarantee Court no. 2 in Campana, ordered that the legal action be dismissed and granted the priest sobreseimiento. The grounds were the statutory limitation: the magistrate ruled that a ten-year limitation period should apply to the alleged offences, which dated back to 2000. Thus, this decision constitutes neither a conviction nor a judicial finding of the priest’s innocence on the merits. Argentinian justice has simply not ruled on the substance of the alleged acts, the legal action being deemed time-barred.
Read the article: https://tribunechretienne.com/messe-de-leon-xiv-a-la-concorde-deja-des-deputes-sagacent-au-nom-de-la-laicite/
It is precisely at this juncture that the question pertinent to Lourdes arises today. For alongside the criminal proceedings, the Argentinian diocese also initiated a canonical inquiry, provisionally barring Father Ghilardini from exercising his ministry in public.
How has this canonical situation since evolved? Did the ecclesiastical inquiry reach the conclusion that the accusations lacked foundation? Were the precautionary measures officially lifted? And under what conditions was the priest then permitted to resume his ministry at the Shrine of Lourdes?
These questions take on added weight inasmuch as Lourdes has become a symbolic site of the French Church’s commitment to victims of abuse. It would be unjust to turn a twenty-six-year-old accusation, one that led to no conviction, into a definitive finding of guilt. The presumption of innocence must apply in full to Father Ghilardini. Yet the converse would be equally unsatisfactory: to consider that statutory limitation alone suffices to silence concerns occasioned by his return to ministry.
With the meeting between Pope Leo XIV and abuse survivors due to take place in Lourdes in just a few weeks’ time, a clarification of Father Ghilardini’s canonical path appears indispensable. Not to sit in judgement in place of either justice or the Church, but to understand how a priest who in 2020 was publicly removed from ministry may today serve as a chaplain in the very heart of France’s most celebrated Marian shrine.
(Further sources: 2024 — Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos Eclesiásticos de Argentina: publication on Eugenia Castagnaro and her accusation against Gabriel Ghilardini, also noting the statutory limitation of the case.
Instagram post by the Red de Sobrevivientes
2024 — Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos Eclesiásticos de Argentina: another post explicitly returning to Eugenia Castagnaro’s denunciation in 2020.
Facebook post on Eugenia Castagnaro and Ghilardini)