The Southern French industrial city of Toulouse has for years enjoyed a warm relationship between its left-leaning worker-priests and its liberal archbishop. Last week the alliance was severely ruptured, as six priests and a nun resigned their parish offices. The issue: celibacy. The occasion: the disciplining of a brother priest, Bernard Forestier, 29, for living with a young social worker named Cecile, 24.
Though many parishioners apparently knew of the liaison and were not disturbed by it, Cecile's parents did complain—to Toulouse's Archbishop Jean Guyot. In a gentle, anguished message read from Toulouse...
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