Press coverage of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church in France (2016–2020)

Abstract

While sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church is a topic of growing importance, and the subject of much work to understand its construction as a public problem, little research has attempted to analyse the press coverage of this phenomenon. This article focuses on French press coverage of sexual violence committed by Catholic Church members between 2016 and 2020, a period of intense coverage, and aims to grasp its causes and solutions as reported in the daily national press. Based on content analysis using an inductive framing grid that lists the causes and solutions reported by four major national daily newspapers, the study results reveal a tendency to highlight systemic causes, particularly the role played by the silence of the Church in the perpetuation of violence, while reporting extensively on individual cases. This reflects both the strong movement of recognition of the victims, as well as their driving role in the newspapers’ exposure of the phenomenon.