Priest Who Slapped Crying Baby in Face to 'Calm Him Down' During Baptism Retires
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Father Jacques Lacroix, an 89-year-old French priest who lost his temper and slapped a crying baby in the face to "calm him down" during a baptism ceremony at the historic Collegiate Church in Champeaux, France, two Sundays ago, says he's now retired from ministry.
Despite international outrage over his actions during the baptism ceremony, Jacques, who apologized for the incident as he announced his retirement, also told France Info radio on Friday that what he did to the boy wasn't quite a slap.
"It was somewhere between a caress and a slap, I hoped to calm him down, I didn't know what to do. The child was screaming a lot and I had to turn his head to pour water over it. I told him to 'calm down, calm down' but he was not calming down," Jacques explained.
"I tried to hold him close. I just wanted him to calm down. I apologized for my clumsiness to the family. I am finishing my ministry now, it was my last baptism, there is an end to everything," he added.
A 43-second video clip of the controversial slap went viral on social media last week, sparking international outrage. It shows Jacques holding the 2-year-old boy's face while attempting to calm him down as a man and a woman who appear to be the child's parents look on, unbothered at first. At about the 23-second mark in the video, the priest applies what appears to be a sharp slap to the left side of the child's face and he begins wailing even louder as the man and the woman quickly try to wrestle the baby from him.
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The bible says don't spare the rod.
The Bible says a lot of things that are bullshit.
The mom should have kicked him right in his vestibules.
"sparking international outrage."
Wow, I bet those are some wild comment sections.
If you tried to pour cold water over me at that age I'd be screaming like a banshee to.
He's to old and it's good that he's retiring.
He should have been arrested for battery on a minor. Let him spend his retirement behind bars.
Jacques is apparently unaware that babies have very little comprehension of the spoken language
They also tend to cry a lot. It is what they do.
Amongst other messier things they do a lot. What they don't do a lot of is stop crying (except maybe briefly out of shock) when they are slapped