A priest who influenced Vatican policy on homosexuality is suspended When a prominent French priest was suspended from ministry this month, it dealt a new blow to efforts to mend the Church’s image over sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. Mgr Tony Anatrella, a 77-year-old psychoanalyst widely dubbed “the Church’s shrink”, had played an international role in shaping Catholic teaching on sexuality. But he had faced accusations of abuse himself. And, on July 4, he was finally barred from priestly and psychiatric functions by Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris. In a dazzling career since the 1980s, Mgr Anatrella had served on pontifical councils, contributed to synods, and been cited as an authority by bishops from the US to Poland. He was instrumental in a 2005 instruction by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education which ruled against admitting seminary candidates who “present deep-seated homosexual tendencies”. But it now seems that Mgr Anatrella had been nursing secrets. Back in 2006 he was accused of molesting his charges during psychotherapeutic “special sessions”. And, while the claims were dismissed as anti-Church slurs, they returned with a vengeance in 2016, when several men testified that he had molested them during attempts to cure their homosexuality. Mgr Anatrella’s lawyers have appealed against his suspension, insisting he is innocent. His accusers have urged him to admit his misdeeds “in conscience, responsibility and Christian engagement”. They have asked Archbishop Aupetit to arrange reparations and revoke Mgr Anatrella’s honorary titles. Fr Philippe Lefebvre, a Dominican who helped bring the scandal to light, thinks the priest was protected by a “powerful silence and organised omertà”, which the Church must now dismantle. “Anatrella held French Catholicism in his ideological grip for 30 years, even while the bishops knew of his abuse”, Fr Lefebvre told France’s Le Point. “He said things conservative Catholics like to hear, while many priests and monks have been in therapy with him, often to cure their homosexual attraction. Some now hold high positions in the Church, so Anatrella knows things, and people are afraid of him.”