Priest–penitent privilege in France and the western portion of Europe received public recognition at a very early date owing to the perceived sacredness of the Seal of the Confessional.
Charles Muteau, another distinguished French jurist, speaks in clear and emphatic terms of the sacredness of the seal, citing, also, various instances in proof.
He tells us in a foot-note of a certain Marquise de Brinvilliers, among whose papers, after she had been arrested, was found a general confession (apparently made in pursuance of religious discipline) accusing herself of an attempt to murder various members of her family.
In Bonino's Case, which is cited in the course of the appellant's argument in Gill v. Bouchard as having been decided by the Court of Cassation of Turin (at that time part of the French Empire) in February 1810, and as being reported in the Journal du Palais périodique, VIII, 667, the court is reported to have decided that an open avowal made by a penitent in consequence of his being counselled in confession to make such avowal ought not to be received in evidence against him.
Désiré Dalloz in his learned and comprehensive work on jurisprudence, in which the whole of French law is compiled and commented on under the numerous subjects affected by it, says that as the laws of France (his work was published in 1853, when he was an advocate practising at the imperial Court of Paris) protect the rules of ecclesiastical discipline, they could not exact from the clergyman, in breach of these rules, the disclosure of secrets revealed to him in the exercise of his ministry.
Citing the canon of the Fourth Lateran Council enjoining the secrecy of the seal, which, he tells us, only reproduces an older rule going back to the year 600, he observes that the inviolability declared by it is absolute and without distinction.
Dalloz appears not to agree with it: The oath prescribed by the Concordat and the Organic Articles is no longer used: even if it were, the obligation which would result from it to disclose to the Government what was being plotted to its prejudice in the diocese or elsewhere could not apply to confession.
The annotator of the report begins his notes by saying that it is a universally admitted point that the exemption from giving evidence is necessarily extended to priests with regard to the matters confided to them in confession.
The Catholic religion being no longer established in France under the auspices of the State, part of the grounds adduced for some of the decisions cited above cease to hold good.
Interior minister Darmanin told him in a meeting that priests are obliged to report cases of sexual violence against children, even when heard in the confessional, to the police.