Uruffe () is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

in north-eastern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

The scandal of the priest of Uruffe

The scandal of the priest of Uruffe was a newsworthy event in the 1950s. It concerns the crime committed by the

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...

Guy Desnoyers. A peasant's son, Guy Desnoyers was ordained a priest in 1946. In July 1950, he was appointed

parish priest A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

in Uruffe. He was a very active priest who was rather appreciated by his parishioners, and won fame for organizing young boys of the area into a

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team. However, at the same time, Desnoyers had relationships with several women. In 1953, he conceived a child with a fifteen-year-old girl, Michèle L. He persuaded her to give birth secretly and to abandon her child. In 1956, he had another relationship with Régine Fays, a nineteen-year-old girl from Uruffe, whom he seduced in the theater activities he had created; she also became pregnant. Desnoyers was able to persuade Régine's father that her lover was a young man from the village who went to fight in the

Algerian War The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence,( ar, الثورة الجزائرية '; '' ber, Tagrawla Tadzayrit''; french: Guerre d'Algérie or ') and sometimes in Algeria as the War of 1 November ...

. Régine promised to keep the secret about the father but she refused to give birth secretly. On 3 December 1956, a short time before the expected delivery date, a frightened Desnoyers shot his mistress in the head on a road. He then performed a

Caesarean Caesarean section, also known as C-section or caesarean delivery, is the surgical procedure by which one or more babies are delivered through an incision in the mother's abdomen, often performed because vaginal delivery would put the baby or mo ...

to extract the female child she bore. He then baptized and killed the baby, slashing its face to prevent recognition. The day after, he helped to search for the bodies, claiming that he knew the murderer but was unable to expose the murderer because of the obligations imposed by receiving confessions. On 5 December he confessed his crime. On 26 January 1958 he was condemned, by the

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of Nancy, to forced labor for life. He was released in August 1978 and retired in a

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, where he died in 2010.

References

Communes of Meurthe-et-Moselle {{MeurtheMoselle-geo-stub

The scandal of the priest of Uruffe

See also

References