Jacques Gaillot

Gaillot also participated in the ceremony of the transfer of the ashes of the late bishop Baptiste-Henri Grégoire (1750–1831) to the Panthéon, a necropolis for the great men of France.

Grégoire had been instrumental in the first abolition of slavery, and the end of discrimination against Blacks and Jews during the French Revolution.

Jacques Gaillot (11 September 1935 – 12 April 2023) was a French Catholic clergyman and social activist.

Jacques Gaillot was born in Saint-Dizier, Haute-Marne, on 11 September 1935.

After his secondary studies, he entered the seminary in Langres.

From 1957 to 1959, he performed his compulsory military service in Algeria during the Algerian War.

From 1960 to 1962 he completed his studies in theology in Rome, earning a bachelor's degree.

He was ordained a priest in 1961.

From 1962 to 1964, he studied at the Higher Institute for Liturgy in Paris and taught at the major seminary in Châlons-en-Champagne.

Beginning in 1965, he was a professor at the regional seminary of Reims, where he chaired sessions for the implementation of the principles of the Second Vatican Council.

In 1973, he was assigned to the parish of St Dizier in his hometown and became co-manager of the institute for the training of seminary instructors in Paris.

In 1977, he was appointed vicar general of the Diocese of Langres.

When the see became vacant in 1981, he was elected diocesan administrator.

He was Bishop of Évreux in France from 1982 to 1995.

On 5 May 1982, Pope John Paul II appointed him Bishop of Évreux.

He received his episcopal consecration on 20 June from Léon Aimé Taverdet, Bishop of Langres.

In his first Easter message he wrote: "I'm not here to convince the convinced or take care of the well. I'm here to support the ill and offer a hand to the lost. Does a bishop remain in his cathedral or does he go into the street? ... I made my choice."

In 1983, Gaillot publicly supported a conscientious objector in Évreux who declined to perform alternative service in forestry on the grounds that it did not contribute to the relief of the destitute or promote peace.

During the annual assembly of the French episcopate, he was one of two bishops (of a total of 110) who voted against a text which supported nuclear deterrence.

In 1984, Gaillot declined to join large-scale Church-led public demonstrations in favour of French parochial schools and signed petitions in favour of secular education.

In January 1985, Gaillot drew sustained media attention for the first time when he signed an appeal on behalf of underpaid Catholic school teachers; also signing the appeal was Georges Marchais, the head of the French Communist Party.

In response, conservatives in Gaillot's diocese described him as "a tool of the church's worst enemies", while the right-leaning newspaper Le Figaro spearheaded a campaign against him.

Also in 1985, Gaillot supported the First Palestinian Intifada.

In 1987, he went to South Africa to meet a young anti-apartheid militant from Évreux sentenced to four years in prison by the South African régime.

There he also appeared at a demonstration where some Communist militants were also demonstrating.

In order to accomplish this trip, he had to renounce going with the diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes, a move that attracted criticism.

Further, in the same year, he also announced that the French Bishops "remain too preoccupied by the correct functioning of the church and its structures."

This only ensured that the responses to Gaillot when he later attacked the right-wing French political party, the National Front, were even stronger.

Also in 1987, Gaillot traveled to Athens to show solidarity with Palestinian refugees.

Perhaps the most notable event he performed in 1987 was attending, by invitation, a special session of the United Nations in New York to speak out for disarmament.

In 1988, during a closed-door session of the annual assembly of the French episcopate in Lourdes, he advocated the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

After the proceedings had finished Gaillot spoke to the press about the discussions held and also promoted his own viewpoints.

By promoting a revision of clerical celibacy and the use of condoms, he caused considerable tension with the French bishops' conference, the situation being exacerbated by the fact that in speaking to the media about the session, Gaillot had violated convention regarding assembly conclaves.

He later defended his previous actions, remarking that "I never broke the vow of celibacy ... I only questioned it. But that's worse."

Also that year, Gaillot took the unprecedented step for a Roman Catholic bishop of blessing a homosexual union in a "service of welcoming," after the couple requested it in view of their imminent death from AIDS.

In 1989, Galliot participated in a trip to French Polynesia organized by the peace movement, asking for the end to French nuclear testing.

In 1995, Pope John Paul II removed him as head of his diocese because he publicly expressed controversial and heterodox positions on religious, political, and social matters.

These views earned Gaillot the popular nickname "the Red Cleric."

From 1995, Gaillot was bishop of the titular see of Parthenia.

His online ministry to dissidents in the Catholic Church under the name Partenia has since been described as the Catholic Church's first virtual diocese.