Priest Matthieu Jasseron, known on TikTok, announces his secularization

The Frenchman Matthieu Jasseron has announced that he is leaving the priesthood after a time without appearing on social networks, where he became famous for controversial content. “I am no longer in tune with the Church,” he says in a video where he denounces abuse and persecution.

Through your YouTube channelOn October 20, Jasseron published an extensive 45-minute video in which he announced his secularization under the title I tell you everything about why I left the cassock.

In it he states that he lives as a hermit in the middle of the forest and has resumed his studies in Psychology. Born in 1984 into a formally Catholic family, but not practicing. In 2013, he entered the Orleans seminary and was ordered in June 2019 and incardinado in the Archdiocese of Sens-Auxerre.

In August 2020, he created a TikTok account in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, where he quickly went viral for his controversial posts. In them the same thing pretended to be a disc jockey with the liturgical vestments and replacing the mixing table with the altar with the sacred species, which showed a “sexy nun” on them.

“I am retiring from the priesthood. “I am no longer sufficiently in tune with the institutional Church to continue being one of its preachers, its administrators or even one of its religious officials,” he explains in the October 20 video.

Regarding his ecclesial situation, he adds that, “in absolute terms, I am still a priest,” in the same way that a married person who separates, without divorce, remains married. “A priori nothing could take it away from me. Neither an official request on my part nor a beautiful document sent by the Vatican,” he adds, while ensuring that this decision is not related to any sexual behavior, punishment or excommunication.

“It’s something much deeper. “I continue to believe, perhaps more than ever, in the strength of the Gospel and the beauty of the Church.” However, he points out, “I can no longer do so as an officially appointed priest of this institution called the Apostolic and Roman Catholic Church.”

In the course of his explanations, Jasseron claims to have been “lynched, attacked, humiliated, manipulated.”

“Sometimes I honestly wonder how I became a priest. I have always had a bit of an anarchist, libertarian tendency. And is there an institution more hierarchical and totalitarian than the Church?”, he asks at another point in his explanations.

He also questions how during his time in the seminary they allowed him to continue until he was ordained, while criticizing that many priests are mere “spokespersons and administrators of the party line,” in reference to the Catholic Church, where he assures that “ultra-fundamentalist fascists” coexist. conservatives and leftists woke.”

List of grievances committed by “mafiosi and traitors”

In his speech, Jasseron describes a long list of ailments that, in his opinion, were unleashed following the publication of his second book, Memoirs of a young priestwhich worked as a “catalyst for a tsunami.”

He points out that those who have harmed him are not ordinary Christians, but “certain leaders of the Church in France, some of its financiers, its media or its high hierarchies” and warns that “all priests and all bishops are not like gangsters.” and traitors that I am going to describe.”

Jasseron denounces a series of serious behaviors such as having been “abused and physically attacked by a bishop”, having suffered “pressure from the secret intelligence services”, or that the press revealed “a secret equivalent to that of a confession” that he had entrusted to an archbishop

He has also mentioned that his identity was usurped on social networks, that he was called to appear before an ecclesiastical court or that his confessor had told private conversations to the newspapers.

He has also denounced that “fundamentalist priests” intimidated him when attending the Masses he celebrated among the attendees.

Jasseron affirms that “the Vatican knew about these abuses” but “was content to remove the archbishop who had harmed me.” Although he does not name him, Jasseron would be referring to the current Bishop of Viviers, Bishop Hervé Giraud, who was transferred from the Archdiocese of Sens-Auxerre last spring.

Although there has been no formal statement from the Church about his case, Jasserson also denounces that he was included in a kind of “blacklist” so that his then ministry colleagues would not answer his calls.

Communiqué from the Archbishopric of Sens-Auxerre

The current Archbishop of Sens-Auxerre, Bishop Pascal Wintzer, who was installed in the archdiocese only on October 6, stated in a statement on October 21 that “I still do not know Matthieu Jasseron or his situation,” and announced that he would meet with him “in the coming days.”

“Every story is personal and we must be careful not to draw general conclusions from it. However, an event like this does not stop questioning our Church in Yonne (ed department in which Sens is located), the priestly ministry and formation,” said the prelate.

“I think of Matthieu Jasseron and I pray for him, for his loved ones, for the parish of Saint John the Baptist in Joigny, in whose service he served until last June. “I express my support and my brotherhood to the priests of the diocese,” concludes the archbishop.