The Community of the Beatitudes, which was formed in 1973 following the Second Vatican Council, includes consecrated brothers, consecrated sisters, and lay married and single members who join together in local groups to share a common prayer and community life.
As of 2019, the ecclesial movement has 760 members in 27 countries on six continents. It has more than 300 lay members, 271 sisters, and 177 brothers, 97 of whom are priests.
Sister Anna Katharina Pollmeyer is the community’s current president.
According to Sister Laetitia du Coeur de Jesus, who oversees the group’s communications, the community “felt the time was right for this review” of its past, La Croix reported.
The commission will work with the team of historian Tangi Cavalin, who has studied the dynamics of Church institutions and who recently published a yearslong investigation into the sexual and spiritual abuses of the Dominican priests Marie-Dominique Philippe and Thomas Philippe, the founders of the Brothers of St. John and L’Arche communities.
The Community of the Beatitudes acknowledged in 2011 that one of its lay founders, Gérard Croissant — also known by the religious name Ephraim — was a sexual abuser.
Religion News