A Tainted Legacy

‘A Tainted Legacy’ expresses the situation confronting L’Arche across the world since the shameful double-life of its founder, Jean Vanier, was exposed in February 2020.

For an international network of 150 plus communities who were long content to bask in Vanier’s reflected glory, the impact has felt ‘an overdue crash course in humility’.

It’s a painful issue too for the many individuals whose lives had been shaped by a man once considered a spiritual giant, spoken of by some as a saint even within his lifetime.

For them, grief has come twice over: first after Vanier’s natural death, and then again, a few months later, after the death of his reputation. How does anyone begin to sift the wheat from the weeds?

Jim Cargin takes up the Edinburgh Newman Circle’s invitation to explore the issues thrown up by Vanier’s ambiguous legacy. What is a mature response to the messy human truth: the same man who, through L’Arche as well as Faith and Light, had done so much to revolutionize the way disability is seen in our world,  had secretly betrayed the very values he publicly advocated. 

Jim Cargin will draw on the 860-page report by the independent commission which L’Arche set up, published in 2023. He will outline the way that individuals have been responding to this crisis, as well as the steps L’Arche has already taken – and is still taking – to face up to a dark chapter in its history. And the lessons for those churches with their own tainted legacies.

Jim Cargin joined L’Arche Highland in Inverness in 1980. Since then, he has carried various leadership and support roles elsewhere in UK, as well as in Poland, Belgium and with the communications team for L’Arche International.