L’Arche spiritual centre closing in response to abuse revelations

By CathNews New Zealand

July 1st, 2025

(Christopher Bemrose / L’Arche Bognor / flickr | Creative Commons/The Tablet)

The Paris spiritual centre of the L’Arche network for people with intellectual disabilities and their assistants is closing following sexual abuse revelations. Source: The Tablet.

A closing ceremony took place at Trosly-Breuil on June 21. The community’s late founder, Jean Vanier, committed “manipulative and emotionally abusive” sex acts with six women in Trosly-Breuil – none of them disabled – according to a report by L’Arche International a year after his death in 2019.

Known as La Ferme, the centre at the small village near Compiègne, north of Paris, stood for “the dark side of the history of this place, which obscures its influence as a spiritual centre of L’Arche”, said a statement from the council of L’Arche in France. L’Arche said it planned to continue its work, especially its spiritual retreats, and to turn the Trosly-Breuil site into one of its participatory housing projects.

Central to the “dark side” was the influence of Thomas Philippe and his brother Marie-Dominique, two Dominican priests who mixed spiritual direction with “mystical” sex acts in a practice explicitly condemned by the Church.

Established in 1971, the centre had the disgraced Fr Thomas Philippe as its chaplain before his death in 1993. The L’Arche model of homes with disabled residents and their assistants living together now operates in around 160 communities in 37 countries. It is a lay-run organisation that maintains its Catholic roots, but is open to everyone.

Assistants help people with disability discover their talents and take on jobs such as vegetable growing, crafts and carpentry. With 14 staff and up to 38 disabled, the atmosphere at Trosly-Breuil was widely considered communal and kindly.

But the centre at La Ferme was also “a privileged space for the development of situations of control, abusive acts – particularly sexual – but also for the initiation of disciples”, the 2020 report said. Philippe had made it a “place conducive to the perpetuation of his practices”.

In a letter to L’Arche members, Pierre Jacquand, national director of the charity in France, wrote: “We are resolutely looking to the future together to continue to live with enthusiasm and boldness what is the essence of L’Arche’s intuition.”

He said it was now going through “a collective search to bring life to life, elsewhere, differently”.

FULL STORY

Centre at heart of L’Arche story to close after abuse report (By Tom Heneghan/The Tablet)