A viral video of a French Catholic priest, Jacques Lacroix, slapping a 2-year-old boy during a baptism ceremony has lead to the forceful retirement of the said priest
The 89 year old had gone viral after Sunday’s baptism ceremony in Paris after a Reddit user posted video that showed the assult
In the video, the priest is visibly irritated at the crying child as he is captured using his left hand to slap the child.
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He tells the child to “Calm down, calm down, you must calm down.” He tells the boy to be quiet before squeezing the boy’s face in his hands.
The priest then stared at the boy before using his left hand to slap him. The boy’s parents and family reacted immediately, with the child’s father wrestling him away from the priest.
While some have described the cleric’s action as unintentional, the furor has since forced the priest to resign.
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In a statement recently made public, the priest said he regretted his decision and announced his retirement. He also explained that just as seen in the video, he was making attempts to quieten the lad however, he panicked leading to his actions depicting a different thing.
“I apologized for my clumsiness to the family. I am finishing my ministry now, it was my last baptism. There is an end to everything,”
Lacroix Jacques denied the slap was too hard. He said;
“It was somewhere between a caress and a slap, I hoped to calm him down, I didn’t know what to do.” “
The child was screaming a lot and I had to turn his head to pour water over it. I told him to ‘calm down, calm down,’ but he was not calming down,” Lacroix said. “I tried to hold him close. I just wanted him to calm down.”
The bishop of Meaux, Jean-Yves, told the Daily Mail that he had “taken measures so that the priest is suspended from all baptism and marriage celebrations.