The Dicastery for the Clergy, which the community twice asked for help, canvassed the group extensively before writing its report documenting misdeeds by founder Fr Jean-François Guérin, who died in 2005, and suggesting future reforms as the group expands.
The community's present leader Fr Paul Préaux was not shown the 1,300-page report submitted to Rome, but after receiving a briefing on its findings he accepted them and the need for help to improve the formation of the community’s priests.
“The St Martin Community is not threatened, it is helped and supported,” Fr Préaux told the weekly Famille Chrétienne. “The truth is a demanding path but recognising it always bears good fruit.”
The community, founded in 1976, has 175 priests in over 30 dioceses – mostly in France but also in Germany and Cuba – and about 100 seminarians. The secular priests live in groups of three invited by bishops lacking sufficient clergy.
While most French dioceses ordained only one or two priests this year, the St Martin Community alone ordained nine.
Investigations revealed that Fr Guérin, the group’s authoritarian founder, had forcibly kissed several people. He also violated Vatican guidelines by being the leader of the community and confessor of its priests.
The two Vatican-appointed assistants, Bishop Matthieu Dupont of Laval and Abbot François-Marie Humman of Mondaye Abbey, near Bayeux, said they would help to “clarify the period of the foundation, the personality of the founder … and the facts several former members of the community accuse him of”.
They will also “accompany the process of renewal of initial and ongoing formation in the light of Roman and national standards”, in response to some lax pratices in the community’s seminary. Fr Préaux said the group was willing to “learn from its mistakes”.
St Martin priests celebrate the Mass in the novus ordo, but also favour traditional cassocks and Gregorian chant. Bishop Dupont said: “There has been no question of liturgy or cassocks. This is not the object of our mission as assistants.”
He added: “The assistants are, in a way, a ‘local branch’ of the dicastery. Instead of being sent to Rome with its long delays, some questions can be raised directly with us.”
Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, the president of the French bishops’ conference, said the step showed that “the Community of St Martin has become an important reality in our Church in France”.