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A report has embroiled the Catholic Church in a pedophile scandal, this time involving an award-winning priest targeting migrants.
Father Antoine Exelmans stands accused of sexual abuse in Morocco. He was ordained in Rennes, France, in 1993, serving as a priest in several parishes in Ille-et-Vilaine and as a chaplain to students in Rennes.
Some of his previous pro-migration statements are now seen in an entirely different light following the allegations.
“ I am leaving at a time when issues related to migrants and Islam are prominent and a source of tension. Some respond with mistrust, fear, and resistance. From my point of view, these differences are an opportunity,” said Antoine Exelmans in 2016. “This globalization, these cultural and religious divergences, are a treasure of fraternity that we must build together.”
If the allegations are true, he also saw an “opportunity” to sexually abuse migrant boys.
His charges stem from his time heading up the migrant reception service at the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes church in Casablanca, where the news Enass revealed he had set up “a system of sexual exploitation (…) against migrant and refugee minors” for at least four years, between 2021 and 2024. The portal lists six alleged victims: one Cameroonian and five Guineans, writes FranceInfo.
Meanwhile, Le Monde states that Exelmans admitted to the acts during an internal Church investigation, according to the Diocese of Rennes.
The findings from the investigation have been sent to Rome.
Exelmans first went to the Central African Republic sometime before 2004, after which he returned to France to serve at the parish of Maurepas until 2009. He then worked at a youth ministry in Bangui until 2012.
For a few years, his whereabouts appear to be unknown. However, he served as the parish priest of Saint-Melaine-aux-Rives-du-Meu from 2016 until 2021. It was then that he helped establish the Tabitha Solidarité association to support exiled people in difficulty.
In 2016, Exelmans was sent to the diocese of Rabat, where he became vicar general. In the bulletin of the Blessed Frédéric Ozanam parish, he wrote a long letter in which he indicated that he was accompanying “in a specific way, in Casablanca, four young people who came from Oujda to live with [him] at the Casablanca presbytery, given their extreme fragility (post-traumatic stress situation with disabling somatizations to resume a normal life, depression, stress… in short a need for attention day and night).”
After a complaint was filed in May 2024, Exelmans left Morocco. The migrant reception center that he was running has since been shut down.
Exelmans was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize 2020 for having “dedicated his life to helping migrants and refugees in Morocco.” According to the InfoMigrants website, “The German award is given each year to women, men or groups who fight against injustice and for peace.”
According to Enass, three of the six victims were interviewed by the National Brigade of the Judicial Police (BNPJ) in Casablanca. The priest was questioned by the judicial police in France, according to Le Monde and is currently under house arrest in a Jesuit community in Saint-Étienne.
FranceInfo notes that despite a newsletter being sent out by the Blessed Frédéric Ozanam parish last January, in which the Archbishop of Rennes, Pierre d’Ornellas, asked anyone with information about Father Exelmans to come forward, this newsletter was not published on the website of the Diocese of Rennes and Ille-et-Vilaine.
