Bishop Rey in french newspaper Liberation july 30th 2023

Idol of "traditional" circles now in the sights of Rome, the prelate at the head of the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon is increasingly criticized for his erratic governance and his uninhibited proximity to the far right. The end of twenty years of complacency?

Smooth skull and emaciated face, Dominique Rey often wears a slightly worrying half-smile. At least for those who don't know him. Those who frequent him readily admit that he is rather “cool” in appearance, generally receiving the unbuttoned Roman collar, in flip-flops and white socks. But if the irremovable bishop of the Var were a movie character, he would be more embodied in Nosferatu than in a good-natured policeman of Saint-Tropez. Marked by strong ties with the Catholic far right and traditionalist circles, Dominique Rey, 70, does not make anyone laugh. So many excesses have accumulated in his diocese, so much his governance is, in the opinion of all including his friends, erratic, ordering seminarians who have often failed in their country, letting the communities he has helped drift to be created. The diocese, according to an expert on the matter, has lost track of around thirty priests ordained over the years by Dominique Rey. Incomprehensible to Catholic leaders. About ten reports to the prosecutor of priests suspected of sexual violence have been made, according to Claude Sirvent, the former head of the service for the fight against sectarian aberrations of the diocese, disembarked from his post by Rey in September 2022. For certain cases, investigations are ongoing.

"He's a creative", underline, in his defense, the majority of those who meet him. "He starts everything out of order, doesn't know how to accompany, that's his big problem", explains a Catholic leader who has been with him for a long time. A revered figure on the religious right, the bishop of the French Riviera, at the head of the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon since the year 2000, willingly buries and marries personalities and crowned heads. On April 29, it was the marriage, in Bormes-les-Mimosas, of Princess Alexandra, daughter of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Who married Nicolas Bagory, a relative of… Rey. The prelate cultivates his relationships. Through Geoffroy Lejeune, the highly contested future boss of the JDD [french newspaper], he met Michel Houellebecq to talk about euthanasia, a subject that greatly concerns them both.

But now Rey is seriously encumbering his institution. "The situation should not last too long," sighs an expert on the matter. Everyone scrutinizes, like the auspices, the signals coming from Rome. "The pope knows the file well and is following it closely," says a well-informed source. Passing through the diplomatic bag, 20 kilos of documents arrived in the spring at the Roman curia, the fruit of the inspection mission carried out in February and March by two "beef-carrots" sent by the Vatican: the Archbishop of Dijon , Antoine Hérouard, and the former number 2 in Rome of the dicastery for the clergy (the equivalent of a ministry), Joël Mercier. On May 29, to close the audit, important meetings took place in Rome, in the services concerned by the crisis in the diocese of Var.

“Our diocese is a flag of convenience”

In the sights of the Vatican since 2021, Dominique Rey is, these days, the invisible man. No one could say where the prelate celebrated his Sunday mass on June 25. Elsewhere in France, bishops ordained new priests on that day. In the Var, Rome cracked down and banned Rey, an extremely rare occurrence, from carrying out these ordinations in 2022 and 2023. A terrible snub that brought the crisis to light. "There was not a word of compassion for the seminarians", alarmed, in his sacristy of the Saint-François-de-Paule church, a stone's throw from the port of Toulon, Father Jean-Raphaël Dubrule, traditionalist director of studies at the seminary who celebrates, like at least ten priests in the diocese, the mass in Latin. The Catholic far right, in support of Rey, does not disarm. Boss of the Beige Salon site, Guillaume de Thieulloy published a widely distributed forum in June, an operation set up with Baptiste Laroche, Reconquest candidate in the Var during the 2022 legislative elections.
To describe the situation, the local priests, those who were born in the Var lands, the "historic canal", as they say, use humor so as not to despair too much. “Our diocese is a flag of convenience. Here, we have avoided civil war for twenty years”, says one of the personalities of the local clergy to explain how much they had to compose. Of the more than 350 "incardinated" priests in the diocese (that is, under its jurisdiction), almost half are of foreign nationality, mainly from Latin America. “We are the most ecological diocese in France; we recycle a lot,” quipped a priest from one of the pretty towns on the coast.

Rey has always made numbers. The number of ordinations has long been the artificial index of its success, about ten per year, almost as many as in Paris. But very few of these priests came from the Var area. Of the eight young men destined to become priests last year, only one was French. The others came from Latin America, Italy or Ireland. With a marked tropism for Catholic traditionalism, in Latin and old lace, now the trademark of the Bishop of Var

An evangelizing tropism

“Rey considers that everyone is entitled to a second chance”, comments a good connoisseur of the file. Even if it means freeing oneself from the common rules which theoretically prohibit bishops from welcoming into their homes seminarians whom others would have considered unordainable. The Bishop of Var has always been the type to do as he pleases. "He imagined that his diocese would be a laboratory not only for the Catholic Church in France but also for the whole universal Church", explains to Liberation Antoine Hérouard, the archbishop of Dijon. A madness of grandeur, fueled by the fervent admiration of his courtiers. The diocese of Fréjus Toulon, a laboratory, but of what? Rey dreamed of being a great evangelizer, converting at all costs: which seduced his first circle of supporters, who were rather naive politically.

With Rey, the evangelizing tropism comes from afar. Born into a very Catholic family in Saint-Etienne, tax inspector, he dropped everything at the end of the 1970s to become a priest after joining the Emmanuel community, which has since become very influential within French Catholicism. John Paul II launches his new evangelization. The Catholic Church believes that it has found its lifeline in the charismatic movements which bring together resolutely proselytizing Catholics, favoring emotion, distrusting reason. Forty years later, many of its groups have sunk into sectarian aberrations and cases of sexual violence, such as the Beatitudes community. As for the new evangelization, it too turns out to be a bitter failure.

At the dawn of the 1980s, Rey, of course, still believed in it, living in a “household” with three other future priests (all of whom became bishops) in a Dominican convent near the Place de l’Etoile. He frequents, not very assiduously, the Catholic Institute of Paris. But never enter the seminary, the usual way to become a priest. "That explains a lot of things," said a Roman prelate. The seminary is a crucible for discovering what the Church is in its diversity.” To chart her course, Rey transgresses the codes. He was ordained in 1984 by Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, then a tutelary figure of French Catholicism. “It is a pure product of Emmanuel, explains one of the history of the community. What interested him at the start, it was the artists. He was instrumental in the conversion of comedian Michael Lonsdale. Very quickly, Rey took care of the recruitment of seminarians for Emmanuel and he exploded the counters. For his community, the future bishop of Var created a festival in Paray-le-Monial, Magnificat, and left a big slate, mopped up by the very Catholic founder of Center Parcs, Piet Derksen.

"He's an opportunist"

Rey is a man of networks and address books. Appointed Bishop of Var in 2000, he traveled to Brazil and the United States, meeting evangelical pastors, such as the famous Rick Warren; Brazil is a country he appreciates. The prelate copies the methods of the evangelicals, installs Brazilian communities in his diocese. For an inconclusive result despite what his supporters say. No more children are baptized than elsewhere, according to estimates by local priests. Despite the Liberation requests, the diocese did not respond on this point. And Rey declined our requests to meet him. As for adults, it is, according to an official of the diocese, about sixty new baptized on average each year (4,000 throughout France). In the entourage of the bishop, we are especially pleased with a peak of 117 adult baptisms carried out in 2022.

Considering their numbers, the priests of Rey do not seem very productive. Much less than in Paris in any case, where there are approximately 400 adult baptisms for a number of priests which reaches approximately 600. A sign of the mess that reigns in the diocese of Toulon-Fréjus, it is difficult to establish a reliable list of clergy. According to the 2021 directory, there would be more than 350 "incardinated" priests in the Var. To the Vatican inspectors, Rey would have announced 282 and his bursar, 255. God, we hope, will recognize his own.

Twelve years ago, Rey turned traditionalist, more precisely “tradismatic”, an explosive mix between charismatic currents and traditionalism. “He is an opportunist, supports one of his former relations. He understood that this is where the vocations of young priests were to be found.” He welcomes Alcuin Reid, an Australian expelled from his seminary and from a British abbey. This one, which will participate in its traditional turn, takes it to a conference in London, in 2016, on the liturgy in Latin which causes controversy. Cardinal Robert Sarah, stationed at the Vatican, pleads for the return to traditional liturgical practices. In 2019, Rey presides, under the pope's windows in Rome, a pilgrimage of supporters of the Latin Mass. And gets angry, as has often happened, with his friend Alcuin Reid whom he refused to order. In 2022, the Australian sneaks off to Italy and finds a more accommodating bishop. And returns to the Var. Since then, there has been war between the two former accomplices.

Rey, promoter of a Catholic masculinism who has (or had) in his relations Frigide Barjot is also, at the time, less and less careful about his political relations. The Var is, it is true, a land where the extreme right flourishes; of the eight deputies of the department, seven are today under the banner of the National Rally. Among his trusted men, we find Mgr Jean-Yves Molinas, a fierce supporter of French Algeria, who created controversy, in 2012 and 2013, for very political homilies at Notre-Dame-de-Paris and in the Toulon Cathedral. He notably sang the praises of Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, one of the perpetrators of the Petit-Clamart attack.

Longevity seen nowhere else

Within the Catholic Church, the Bishop of Toulon is also the one who broke the dikes with the far right, by inviting Marion Maréchal-Le Pen to a symposium in 2015. In 2018, he chose a director of cabinet (a somewhat pompous title for a diocese) with clear political connections, Yves-Marie Sévillia, former parliamentary assistant to the Senate of David Rachline, the RN mayor of Fréjus. On the spot, few people know the political CV of Sevillia. In the clergy of the Var, "historic channel", it has always been thought, out of naivety no doubt, that Rey was exploited by Parisian pharmacies such as the Salon beige or Riposte catholique. The Church has long tolerated Rey's political wanderings.

"It's been fifteen years since the Vatican should have intervened" to restore order in the diocese, exclaims a local Catholic personality. Everyone is surprised at the inertia, even complacency, from which Rey has benefited. Who always made people believe that he was a champion of evangelization and... of vocations. His longevity at the head of the diocese of Var can no longer be seen anywhere else. “In fact, he could not be moved to another diocese”, explains an expert on the file. This is a sign of the difficulty and uneasiness of the Catholic authorities towards him. What changed for Rome to open the file? Internal criticisms, in particular those addressed by a former director of the seminary, Arnaud Adrien, the reception in Toulon of Paraguayan seminarians from the traditionalist seminary of Ciudad del Este, closed by order of the pope, the open war, in 2021, by the pope Francis against the Latin Mass? The reasons have surely added up.

To save his mitre, Rey can still snatch a reprieve of a few months, even a year. Hardly more. For this, he has the support of Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the Archbishop of Marseille, one of the most influential men of French Catholicism who is to welcome Pope Francis to his home on September 22 and 23. “The cardinal believes that Rey should not be humiliated and pleads for the appointment of a coadjutor”, explains an expert on the file. That is to say a bishop who would come to assist him initially before succeeding him. In the Var and Catholicism, the argument of humiliation startles more than one. "Because Rey didn't humiliate anyone?" laughs a Var priest, recently sidelined. A name is already circulating for this probable coadjutor: François Touvet, son of a soldier and bishop of Châlons-en-Champagne, a neoconservative profile that satisfies the religious right and extreme right. They are determined not to lose their bastion in the Var. Is Pope Francis ready to give them this gift?

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