Pope faces test amid claims of misconduct against cardinal
How Vatican handles allegations against Canadian will send strong message
“Where there is difficulty, we must confront it, especially if a bishop is involved.”
These words, uttered by Cardinal Marc Ouellet in 2019 upon the release of new Vatican rules for handling sexual-abuse cases, might choke the man if fed back to him today.
At the very least, they should give pause to the Canadian who was considered a contender at the last papal conclave now that troubling allegations against him of sexual misconduct have been made public.
And the Roman Catholic Church should put a pause on the top cardinal’s illustrious career for the time it takes to fully assess and adjudicate the claims, by a former intern at the Diocese of Quebec, of inappropriate touching — an unwanted shoulder massage, hugs and the touching of the claimant’s buttocks.
That there is a need for such a pause is, at least, the opinion of Mark McGowan, a University of Toronto historian who has watched the Catholic Church in Canada and around the world struggle with the scourge of clergy abuse.
“Should he be exonerated, then he could return to his position,” McGowan said. “But I think even right now, with the hint of this kind of scandal, and given his age (78 years old), I think he’s probably done and, really, in good conscience, should step down.”
How the Vatican handles the allegations against Ouellet will send a deafening message from the highest echelons of the institution, one that could bolster Pope Francis’s credibility on clergy abuse or undermine it.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen!” proclaims the Old Testament verse that risks ringing true all these years later, even if the allegations against Ouellet are recent history.
The complaint made to church officials with the Diocese of Quebec in late 2020 was about events that allegedly occurred more than a decade before and ended when Ouellet was called to Rome by Pope Benedict XVI to take a place at the highest ranks of the church’s hierarchy.
The Quebecer now serves as the prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, a job that has him advising Pope Francis on the selection of new bishops.
Think of him as the Vatican’s executive headhunter, a post that still affords him a weekly audience with the boss — despite Francis ordering a Vatican probe into Ouellet’s alleged conduct when it was brought to his attention in early 2021, according to the statement of claim, to which no statement of defence has yet been filed.
That the Pope could continue to consult with and place his confidence in someone he must surely know to be the subject of a complaint is curious and leaves Francis open to criticism on an issue he cannot afford to be seen as ignoring.
So far, Rome has remained silent, but now stands vulnerable to judgment before the public of giving special treatment to one of the church’s “princes,” as the cardinals are known.
Particularly when Ouellet is compared to the Quebec priest alleged in the same class-action suit to have repeatedly sexually assaulted the same woman who made claims against Ouellet, albeit several years later.
In April of this year, Father Léopold Manirabarusha, was suddenly removed from his ministry in the Quebec City area — and inelegantly cropped out of the publicity photo for a church fundraiser — due to allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” that were received by the diocese.
A spokesperson, Valérie RobergeDion, told Presence, a French-language publication in Quebec specializing in religious coverage, that Manirabarusha’s suspension was standard protocol when dealing with allegations of impropriety.
“It’s the balance that we have found between ensuring a thorough followup of a serious allegations and respecting the person concerned, who must be presumed innocent in accordance with the laws of Quebec,” she said.
Roberge-Dion didn’t say what the specific allegations were against Manirabarusha.
But we now know, thanks to an itemized list obtained by the Star, that in addition to Ouellet’s inappropriate touching, the claimant said she was compelled by the priest, who is originally from Burundi, into acts of masturbation, oral sex and penetration — the incidents occurring in churches, hotels and at the victim’s home.
The allegations of a total of 131 victims in that six-page list are against dozens of men alleged to have committed horrible violations of vulnerable individuals under their charge or influence.
A preteen raped in the church sacristy in the 1950s; an abbot masturbating his teenage victim in the back seat of a car while being driven around by the church janitor; a horrified 12-year-old whose first sexual contact ended with the thought that the priest who slipped into his bed and out of his clothes had urinated on his stomach.
And there are more to come. After hearing of the claims against Ouellet, lawyer Justin Wee, who is leading the class-action lawsuit, said another dozen individuals came forward with their own tales of abuse against other church officials.
Allegations against men of the cloth have hobbled the church’s credibility in Canada and around the world, causing a spiritual gulf, financial hardships and an uncertain future for local dioceses.
In Canada, we have the widespread sexual abuse of young orphan boys in the 1970s at the Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland and Labrador — crimes that were covered up by the church, police, the courts and government for years.
We have the $15-million settlement of a lawsuit in 2012 paying out cash to 125 victims of a priests in Antigonish, N.S. — a case that only came about because of allegations of a sexual-abuse victim penned in a 2002 suicide note.
That was quickly followed by the September 2012 arrest and subsequent conviction of Bishop Raymond Lahey — the man who announced the Antigonish settlement — after border officials in Ottawa discovered child pornography on his laptop computer following an overseas trip.
And we have the tragedy of Canada’s residential school system, and the abuses that were committed against defenceless Indigenous children by Catholics and Protestants alike.
“One of the things that (the Canadian Catholic) Church learned from Mount Cashel, from Antigonish and from Ottawa is that they have to act responsibly and expeditiously on these cases, and they have to put the victim first,” McGowan said.
“Historically — because it would give scandal to the church — there was a time when the clergy would close ranks and then just move a guy. That’s not going to be done anymore —ever, at least in Canada.”
In Rome, too, Pope Francis has taken a harder public line on cases of sexual abuse by clergy, particularly when compared to John Paul II and Benedict, his predecessors.
But he had a wrong-footed reaction and cast doubt on the claimants when confronted in 2018 with widespread abuse allegations in Chile and initially rejected charges that Bishop Juan Barros — a man he knew personally — was involved in covering up the crimes from the 1980s.
When the allegations were borne out, Francis apologized and attacked the problem with a convert’s zeal.
The result was a 2019 papal edict, known as a “motu proprio,” that set out rules for the reporting and investigation of sexual abuse and coverups of such crimes within the church.
Necessary, Francis wrote, because “the crimes of sexual abuse offend Our Lord, cause physical, psychological and spiritual damage to the victims and harm the community of the faithful.”
Francis signed off on the new rules, and Cardinal Ouellet was engaged in preaching their qualities to the public, including in the 2019 interview with Vatican News, the church-run publication.
Ouellet himself noted that a key part of Francis’s plan was an expanded definition of sexual misconduct to include “forcing someone, by violence or threat or through abuse of authority, to perform or submit to sexual acts.”
“We know that thanks to God almost all bishops ... are men who seek to follow the example of Jesus Christ in the daily life of testifying to his Gospel,” Ouellet told his interviewer.
Seeking inspiration in a higher power is the way of all faiths.
But seeking the shelter of one’s superiors from sexual misconduct allegations has a long history in the Catholic Church.
Will the Pope have Ouellet’s back? Will Canada’s top cardinal maintain the trappings of church power? Or is he faced with an infamous — and imminent — end to his career?
“It will be entirely up to Francis as to whether he stays on,” McGowan said, comparing Ouellet’s case to those of former Q107 host Jon Derringer, who was taken off the air while the Toronto radio station investigated claims of workplace abuse and harassment.
“If a DJ has to step down because of allegations of bullying, a cardinal certainly should do the right thing until the air is cleared either way. It’s the honourable thing to do.”