Uruffe

The scandal of the priest of Uruffe

The scandal of the priest of Uruffe is a scandal that was in the news in the 50's. It deals with the crime committed by the Catholic priest Guy Desnoyers.

A peasant's son, Guy Desnoyers was ordained a priest in 1946. In July 1950, he was appointed parish priest in Uruffe. He was a very active priest and rather appreciated by his parishioners and won fame for organizing young boys of the area into a soccer team. However, at the same time, Guy Desnoyers had relationships with several women. In 1953, he conceived a child with a fifteen-year-old girl, Michèle L. He persuaded her to give birth secretly and to abandon her child. In 1956, he had another relationship with Régine Fays, a nineteen-year-old girl from Uruffe, whom he seduced in the theater activities he had created. She also gets pregnant. Desnoyers was able to persuade Régine's father that her lover is a young man of the village, gone to Algeria to fight. Régine promised to keep the secret about the father but she refused to give birth secretly.

On December 3, 1956, a few time before the expected day of delivery, Guy Desnoyers got frightened and, on a road, shot his mistress in the head. Then, he disemboweled her to do a Caesarean and extract the female child, which she bore. He baptized, then killed the baby. He also slashed the baby's face to obscure a possible resemblance. The day after, he helped to search for the bodies, claiming that he knew the murderer but was unable to expose the murderer because of the obligations imposed by receiving secret of confessions. But, on December 5, he confessed his crime. On January 26, 1958, he was condemned, by the Court of assizes of Nancy, to forced labor for life. He was released in August 1978 and retired in a monastery in Brittany.