Founder of French Eucharistic community forbidden to offer Mass, hear confessions

January 24, 2023

Father Nicolas Buttet, a former local Swiss lawmaker, lay Vatican employee, and philanthropist who founded the Fratérnité Eucharistein (Eucharistic Fraternity) in 1996 and led the community until 2020, has been forbidden to offer Mass, hear confessions, or have contact with the community, which operates in France and Switzerland.

The priest, now 61, was a speaker at the International Eucharistic Congress in 2008 and has been interviewed repeatedly by Vatican Radio and Vatican News over the past decade (2013, 2017, 2019, 2019).

A canonical visitation of the community found a “pyramidal, abusive, infantilizing system” whose “authoritarianism” was “reminiscent of that of a religious community in the 1950s,” according to a Swiss newspaper report. The visitors also criticized Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon (France), who ordained Buttet to the priesthood in 2003, for lax oversight of the Eucharistic Fraternity.

Father Buttet, now at a monastery in France, disputed the visitation’s findings.

 

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Further information:

• Le prêtre Nicolas Buttet suspendu de ses fonctions (Le Matin)