Community of the Beatitudes
[2] Situated in the charismatic renewal movement, its spirituality is both Eucharistic and Marian, inspired by the Carmelite tradition and living out the spirit of the Beatitudes (Matthew chapter 5).
It gathers together the faithful of all states of life (families, single people, priests and consecrated brothers and sisters), who share a common vocation of prayer and fraternal communion, combining a marked contemplative dimension with numerous apostolic and missionary activities such as parishes, hospital and health care, Marian sanctuaries, retreat centers and ministry to the poor.
In the past, the community was the subject of complaints in justice and judicial investigations showing questionable practices: the MIVILUDES asked the prefect of Haute-Garonne to check the legality of voluntary work.
[13] On 19 January 1979, the community was first recognised by the Catholic Church at the diocesan level by Robert-Joseph Coffy, Archbishop of Albi, as a "pious union".
In December 2007, the community announced that the Pontifical Council had extended the provisional for a period of two years during which there was to be a clarification of the statutes as well as the canonical status of members.
Persons living in families were to have separate and independent housing, paid employment and the social security coverage provided by law.
Following a request by Cardinal Bernard Panafieu, charged by the Holy See with responsibility for the Beatitudes, it was postponed because of legal proceedings against the leadership of the community.
[16] In 2010 the community numbered almost 100 priests, 40 seminarians, 350 consecrated sisters, and hundreds of lay members in 70 houses, in 30 countries and on all continents,[17] at the request of bishops in more than 60 dioceses.
[26] Bishop Jean Vernette, appointed national secretary of French episcopate for the study of cults and new religious movements and also member of the CCMM, also complained in January 2001, regretting that "groups within Church officially recognized by the ecclesial authority", including the Community of the Beatitudes, are "wrongly" labelled as cults, and also warned against a confirmed deviance by some people, according to him, who "want to use the anti-cult fight as a rocket for an anti-religious fight", spreading "the usual thought line of the Rationalist Union, the freethought and the Freemasonry in its atheist version".
[33] Even though "no charges have been ever pressed against him",[33] Father Donneaud adds “The Community of the Beatitudes is deeply ashamed of the failures of Ephraim, and expresses compassion and sorrow to the victims of the abuses.
The new information about the gravely culpable acts committed by several of its members, in particular its founder, has led the community to move further ahead in the process of repentance and purification of its memory.” .
[33][34] The present Statutes of the Community were renewed ad experimentum on June 29, 2014, for 3 years, under the guidance and support of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life.
