Bishop Gaillot refuses to apologise to Pope

BY OUR ROME CORRESPONDENT
POPE JOHN PAUL II has twice postponed his face-to-face meeting with the controversial French Bishop Jacques Gainot, removed from the diocese of Evreux, Normandy last January.
According to sources in France, where bishops are meeting in plenary session this week, and in the Vatican, Bishop Gaillot has received no reply to two letters both requesting a private meeting with the Pope.
Bishop Gaillot was removed from his diocese after refusing to comply with repeated Vatican requests to adopt a lower profile on delicate social issues such as divorce. The French Episcopal conference seemed this week to confirm opinions in the Vatican that it would not be opportune for Bishop Gaillot "banished" to Mauritius as a missionary to meet John Paul II until he "acknowledged his errors".
The Conference President Joseph Duval said that Bishop Gaillot was not helping his situation even now that he had been removed from his diocese. He suggested that Rome would frown upon a recent interview the prelate gave to a French weekly, in which he continued to expound his views. "Before being received by the Holy Father, Bishop Gaillot would have to acknowledge his errors", Duval said during a plenary session, at Lourdes.