The sky is low over the mountain of Broummana. At the top of a hill lined with pine trees stands an austere white building. At the reception, a lady behind her counter picks up the handset: “Hello? God bless you Monsignor, journalists are here to see you. The switchboard operator changes her face. "Oh, he's not here? He's not here," she says, shaking her head. "He doesn't come here often. He has a lot of institutions (to manage), ”she adds. We will never really know if the man she is talking about, the Maronite priest Mansour Labaky, was at that time within the walls of the main building of the convent of the Sisters of the Cross in Broummana.

Since the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found him guilty in 2013 of sexually abusing three minors, over a period from 1976 to 1997, it is in this almost deserted place that the 81-year-old priest would have withdrawn, condemned to a life of prayer and penance, far from any minor, and deprived of his ecclesiastical office.

Eight years after the Vatican's condemnation, the priest finds himself this time facing civil justice, and more precisely before French justice. A trial opens Monday morning in Caen, Normandy, where he will be tried in absentia on charges of rape and sexual assault on 15-year-old minors by a person in authority. The facts were allegedly committed in France in the Notre-Dame-Enfants du Liban home, which took in Lebanese children and which Father Labaky opened in Douvres-la-Délivrande in 1990. The home closed its doors in 1998.

Since the opening of the judicial investigation in 2013 at the Caen court, the priest, who faces a twenty-year prison sentence, has never set foot on French soil again. In 2017, Lebanon refused to extradite him despite an arrest warrant issued against him via Interpol a year earlier. “At least 27 victims are listed in the file, but for most of them the facts are prescribed. The Lebanese victims are surely much more numerous, but they cannot express themselves as long as Labaky has so much power in Lebanon, ”says Maître Solange Doumic, the lawyer for the three plaintiffs.

The cleric, who continues to proclaim his innocence, still enjoys a certain aura in his native land. Abouna Mansour is inscribed in the collective memory as the cantor of the Maronite Church and the savior of the orphans of the civil war. Music composer and prolific writer, his liturgy rocked several generations. For a decade, he was able to count on the support of part of the Christian community, including its most powerful branches. In response to the accusations, the prelate brandished the conspiracy thesis. His Lebanese lawyer, Maître Antoine Akl, evokes in turn a succession affair that would have gone wrong, triggering the ire of certain accusers, but also a "Zionist" cabal, because of the conversion of an "academician of origin Jewish” to Christianity by the priest.

“One day, I will have the mass sung”

Mansour Labaky, born in Baabdate in 1940, was ordained on March 26, 1966. Lebanon was experiencing its golden age, and the young cleric did not lack ambition. At the time, he was in charge of spiritual direction at the patriarchal seminary of Ghazir. It was there that Antoine Saad, former secretary general of the Christian channel Télé Lumière and former secretary general of La Sagesse University, met him for the first time. He was then 12 years old. “He was our music teacher. I was raised by him, like hundreds of other young people. Not once did I hear anyone complain about an inappropriate word or gesture, ”says Antoine Saad, who defends the innocence of his longtime friend. "Someone as busy as him, who knows a whole bunch of people in high places here or elsewhere, doesn't have time to indulge in these things of which he is accused," he continues.

Mansour Labaky during an intervention on Télé Lumière. (video capture)

In the early 1970s, Mansour Labaky left his mountain for the United States where he began translating liturgical melodies from Syriac to English. "One day, I will have the mass sung", he professed then, establishing himself as the reformer of the Maronite liturgy. “Lebanon has its father Duval (French Jesuit singer-composer father), with a few small differences. He does not perform from stage to stage, from town to town, he prefers television and 45 rpm records and as a guitar, of course, he has an “oud”,” wrote L’Orient-Le Jour in 1971. This workhorse is rapidly gaining notoriety. At the family home, religious congregations follow one another and aficionados crowd. The future patriarch Raï, a close friend, is then much less known to the public.

“He was someone who liked to be the center of attention. If he was mentioned in an article or if he was on television, it was the topic of conversation in the clan,” recalls his niece, Céleste Akiki. The one who has lived for years in the United States is one of the few Lebanese women to publicly accuse him of having abused her when she was a minor. It will take her years to get out of her loneliness, to get out of what she describes as "hell". Céleste was only eight years old when her uncle let her know that they "would both make a wonderful couple", she says. “‘You are my favorite niece, you are sensitive, funny, intelligent, you would be the ideal wife for me,’ he whispered to me,” she adds. A seemingly innocuous conversation, but which marks a turning point in their relationship. “In reality, he was preparing his prey by isolating him, and he succeeded,” laments Céleste Akiki. In 1975, war broke out and his father died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. Some time later, Mansour Labaky insinuates himself as a "father figure and a spiritual guide", according to his niece who assures that it was then that he sexually assaulted her for the first time. She is 14 years old. Him, 22 more. He takes advantage of the confession by locking himself with her in the parental room. "I remember a 'no' exploding in my head, but it didn't come out. I was too scared,” she says. Her uncle sows discord in the family in order to ostracize Céleste. It is then impossible for him to reveal anything. Who would believe her? “You have in front of you Mansour Labaky, that is to say someone adored in the family circle, and put on a pedestal throughout the country”, she supports.

Children's Choir

January 1976. Then vicar of the parish of Damour, Mansour Labaky witnesses attacks by Palestinian factions that kill hundreds. To the survivors gathered in his church, while the town was surrounded and all help seemed impossible, the priest asked "to forgive and offer their lives for the peace of the world". All respond with a song of faith and love. The inhabitants manage to escape by sea by cramming into boats, under freezing rain. The episode poses him as a hero and allows him to shape his character. This tragedy convinced him to found homes to help orphans of all faiths. He also plans to launch a choir across the country, like the Little Singers of the Wooden Cross. To finance his plans, the priest surrounds himself with influential and wealthy people around the world. Missioned by the Maronite patriarchate, the one who was appointed parish priest of Roumié in 1978 gave dozens of conferences in churches and in cultural, religious and university centers.

Marilène Ghanem, 51 years old today, met him for the first time in December 1984, with her 4th grade class who came to interview her. Young girls are immediately seduced by this charismatic character. “Listening to music in church was new to us, very modern,” she recalls. As a confessional, the prelate had a chair and a prie-dieu installed for all to see. The 14-year-old girl, daughter of divorcees at a time when it is still frowned upon, is going through a period of turmoil, plagued by guilt for having been touched by a loved one, at the age of 7. Acts that she immediately confesses to this priest who inspires her confidence. “With the face you have, if I were your parent, I would have done the same thing,” he replies, Ms. Ghanem recalls, promising to spend a day at her house. “Walaw Téta, do you know who Mansour Labaky is? Of course he won't come, ”says her grandmother with whom she lives. A week later, he shows up on their porch. "He came to help me make 'my spiritual journey', I who had nothing to do with religion. I walked him to his car and there he kissed me on the mouth. I didn't understand, I thought it was my fault, that I had turned on the wrong side. But when we saw each other again, he told me that he had done it on purpose. And it was from there that he did what he wanted to do, ”says Marilène Ghanem from Italy where she has lived for several years. According to her testimony, Mansour Labaky comes back to see her several times, demands oral sex from her. The young woman is disgusted, but thinks to please him. He makes her believe that she is the woman of his life. During the act, he tells her that she is his “Mary Magdalene”, that with her “he experiences sin and forgiveness”. A “spiritual-manipulative language” which he would have used with other alleged victims, who will testify tomorrow in the Caen court. Father Labaky ends up abruptly disappearing from Marilène's life, caught up in her plan to open an orphanage in France. “He boasted of going to the Moulin-Rouge, but always with his rosary, or to the casino with a French bishop friend,” she says. The teenager, totally under his control, then becomes the "dismissed mistress" and sinks into depression. From the top of the class, she experiences school failure, and her family, to whom she will not tell anything, does not understand what afflicts her. She then turns to orders for lack of anything better.

Not the “typical priest”

The end of the 1980s marked a new upward phase in the life of the Lebanese priest, whose humanitarian actions were praised and his musical and literary works awarded prizes, particularly in France. “Sexual predators are often well-known personalities who have a knack for influencing the public to achieve their ends. He was not someone on the margins, he has connections everywhere, ”supports a Lebanese priest on condition of anonymity, who sang, as a child, the compositions of Mansour Labaky in the church of his village.

After charming the crowd, the priest feels he has a political card to play. "I would like to bring about a miracle in my country so that it is possible to ensure the survival of the 17 communities that live there", he said in Paris in October 1988, on the occasion of a symposium organized for the release of his book My Wanderer of the Moon. He even calls for an international conference for Lebanon. “After all,” he remarks, “America is fighting well to save three whales. »

Faced with the judicial unpacking, the Maronite Church initially had a reflex of self-defense by sending its missionaries on a crusade against all those who dared to sully the integrity of Labaky. Photo archives The OLJ

“I could no longer remain a singing priest, a writer, the “typical priest”. Lebanon needed action,” he confided in our columns in 1999. In the French capital, he founded the spiritual movement Lo Tedhal (Do not be afraid, in Syriac). With his support in French Catholic circles, he opened the Sainte-Marie-Enfants-du-Liban home in 1990 in Douvres-la Délivrande, in Calvados, where he welcomed Lebanese Christian and Muslim orphans for the school year. but also young French people. “He had the aura of the poet, the aura of the priest given to God. It was the war in Lebanon, Lebanon is very important for France, people in France loved Lebanese children and were fascinated by their savior”, underlines Me Solange Doumic. It was in this center that he allegedly raped, according to the prosecution, a French woman, M.D., then aged 13, who had been placed in a home while her family was going through a difficult situation, as well as two Lebanese orphans sent to France when they were 7 and 11 years old. “With his manipulative character, he used all his different auras to hold these children under his control who could not complain to anyone,” continues the lawyer. Some French victims say, according to the lawyer, that when Father Labaky kissed them on the mouth and they were offended, he repeated the same thing over and over again: "But you Westerners are too stuck, with us in the East we is not like that. Loosen up, Christ is love. »

In 2011, following the report of several people concerning events having taken place in France, an investigation was opened at the request of the Apostolic Nuncio, by the Ordinary of Eastern Catholics of France – then Cardinal André Vingt- Three –, then entrusted to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Paris. Marilène Ghanem, who left orders in the meantime, learned in 2012 that she was not the only one to have fallen under Labaky's thumb and decided to file a complaint. For years, she will move heaven and earth for justice to be done, going so far as to call the Vatican several times a day to follow up or even intervene in all the adventures of the case. Celeste Akiki will also file a complaint. “When he founded his orphanage in Caen, he warned everyone that I was crazy by saying, for fear that I would reveal everything: “If my niece phones, hang up on her.” This is what tipped off the French officials who went to get me years later, ”says Céleste Akiki. Mansour Labaky will be heard twice, in March 2012, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, before being condemned by the latter in first instance by decree of April 23, 2012. After having appealed, his last resort will be rejected by Rome on June 19, 2013. “They judged him without him being able to defend himself. He was only allowed one hour to read, in the presence of guards, the 206-page report accusing him,” laments his lawyer Me Antoine Akl.

"We only left him with oxygen"

When the verdict falls, Céleste Akiki is warned that the prescription has been lifted in her case because of the seriousness of the facts, which are incest. “I remembered the whole period when the abuse started. And I wanted to put that in parentheses. Even if he is doomed, nothing will bring back what you lost. The innocence of children is sacred”, book Céleste Akiki, very moved.

Following the judgment of the Congregation, Father Labaky was forbidden to celebrate Mass in public and to confess, to carry out any spiritual accompaniment, public activity and speech in the media, or to maintain contact with the victims. “We gave him all the possible sanctions, we only left him oxygen! castigates his Lebanese lawyer. The Vatican's condemnation provoked an outburst in the Lebanese media, which defended the "innocence" of the man of the Church. “Two days after the announcement of the judgment, he arrived at the Monnot theater in Beirut and was welcomed like a star, in a room full of children, to attend a play given by children. This proves that he didn't care at all. I was there with my daughters and I saw red, but I couldn't make a scene, ”says a witness to the scene.

While Mansour Labaky is not completely eclipsed from public life, he is on the other hand disappearing from the airwaves, in particular from Télé Lumière programs where he previously appeared on a recurring basis. “There are plenty of pending projects, new songs, but we cannot contradict the decision of the Vatican. We hope that a decision will be made so that he can reappear, ”continues to believe Antoine Saad.

Between 2013 and 2016, the priest's supporters will campaign, ignoring the Vatican's verdict. On television sets, on the radio or in the newspapers, personalities or ecclesiastics follow one another to plead his cause. The Superior General Mother Daniella Harrouk notably intervened in October 2013 on Télé Lumière on behalf of all the women and girls of the Saints-Coeurs schools to proclaim the “innocence” of the “Monsignor”. “I was outraged. Me, I am a girl from the Saints-Coeurs, and Labaky took me out of my class for oral sex, and this in a room opposite the office of the director without her knowing anything about it, ”accuses Marilène Ghanem.

To stifle the scandal, the pro-Labaky do not hesitate to drag the alleged victims through the mud. His lawyer Antoine Akl fired red balls at all the accusers and filed a complaint in 2014, in particular against Bishop Luis Ladaria, then number two of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Investigating judge Peter Germanos, in charge of this case, quickly closed the case, without questioning the defendants, declaring himself incompetent in a case concerning the Catholic Church. “Labaky couldn’t have done what he did in Lebanon if there wasn’t this culture of worshiping powerful people. Because impunity reigns, he allowed himself to attack the victims instead of expiating his fault, ”deplores Me Nizar Saghieh, the Lebanese lawyer for Céleste Akiki and Marilène Ghanem.

Father Mansour Labaky, in the Madeleine church, next to Bernard Porte, in 1987. L’OLJ archive photo

The complaint filed in the criminal court of Baabda, which L'Orient-Le Jour was able to consult, suggests that a "set of resentful and lying grudges" have formed an "alliance of the wicked", called "Alliance Saint -Antoine”, whose “objective was revenge, slander, defamation, insult and the fabrication of false crimes (...)”. Contacted, the French lawyer of Mansour Labaky, Me Florence Rault, did not respond to our requests. “The verdict (of Caen) is not in doubt. Whether he is sentenced to 5, 10 or 20 years in prison, it is not the problem of the victims, as long as he is officially condemned for the crimes he has committed”, insists for her part Solange Doumic.

The Lebanese defense relied on a series of 2,000 e-mails exchanged between the ecclesiastical authorities and the alleged victims, and found in a cardboard box placed on the doorstep of Mansour Labaky in 2013 by "la Sainte Providence" . The names of the victims are thrown in the food on the social networks. “Not only is it illegal to seize correspondence, to publish it, but it is even more serious to use it to change its meaning”, protests Me Solange Doumic, who was herself summoned by a Lebanese criminal court for defamation after an interview given to the LBC in May 2016. In the complaint filed by Labaky's defense before the press court in Beirut, the French lawyer is accused of having launched a media campaign to basis of "slander" and "public defamation", among others.

“Dismissing a priest in secret”

Faced with the judicial unpacking, the Maronite Church first has a reflex of self-defense by sending its missionaries on a crusade against all those who dared to sully the integrity of Labaky. “According to her, when you attack one of its members, it is the whole Church that you are attacking. However, it is time for the Eastern Churches to act with more transparency on issues of child abuse, instead of dismissing a priest in secret”, supports the aforementioned anonymous Lebanese priest.

The hacked emails land on Pope Francis' desk, sent by Patriarch Bechara Raï himself. On March 18, 2016, the cardinal appeared in a video during a visit to Saint-Joseph College in Antoura, and publicly defended Mansour Labaky, denouncing a "well-orchestrated slander campaign", and stating that he had brought to the Vatican "the files which prove these lies". Under pressure from Rome, he retracted a few days later.

Soon after, on May 8, 2016, Lebanese media reported the Patriarch's trip to Lisieux for the inauguration of a chapel dedicated to Lebanon. Nearly 3,000 people attend the ceremony. But another scene takes place a little earlier behind closed doors. "The Bishop of Bayeux-Lisieux, Monseigneur Boulanger, warned Cardinal Raï upstream that he would not enter his bishopric if he did not meet the victims of Mansour Labaky", says Marilène Ghanem, the only Lebanese woman on the scene posing as a victim of Mr. Labaky among several other French victims. Words confirmed by Father Laurent Berthout, spokesperson for the current bishop. “This meeting took place before Mass. The victims gave their testimony and Cardinal Raï was overwhelmed, very moved by what he heard”, supports the French priest.

In a last desperate attempt, Labaky's supporters will even use a dedication from the pope as proof of the priest's "innocence". In 2019, the Lebanese ambassador to the Holy See, Antonio al-Andari, had the sovereign pontiff autograph his book God is young where the latter signs: “To Father Mansour Labaky, with my blessing, Francis. »

Five years later, the Labaky case has run out of steam. Tongues are gradually starting to loosen up, especially since Pope Francis, who displays zero tolerance, expressed his sorrow following the publication last month of the Sauvé report on pedocrime in the French Catholic Church. After years of keeping Mansour Labaky's guilt vague, the Maronite Church is now clear. “We follow the position of the Vatican, which is why we adopted a law in November 2016 against the sexual abuse of minors. As far as I know, Father Labaky is still a recluse in the convent,” says the Maronite Patriarchal Vicar, Msgr. Hanna Alwan. The Maronite Church is currently examining the cases of priests suspected of paedophilia, according to Bishop Alwan.

In 2010, even before the investigation began, Mansour Labaky took up his pen in the columns of L'Orient-Le Jour to defend the Church, which he believed was under attack from all sides. "Pedophilia is a disease, like cancer, which needs to be cured," he wrote in this text which sounds, in many respects, like a manifesto. Before adding: “In each of us sleeps a great sinner capable of all turpitude and a great saint capable of being after the heart of God. »

Mansour Labaky: A priest faces the demons of the past