The Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a prominent prelate who serves as prefect of the bishops’ department, has joined the list of senior church officials linked to an abuse case. His name appears in a collective complaint filed by more than 100 victims against the diocese of Quebec and which points the finger at 88 people, including representatives of the Church and local employees of the establishment, presumed responsible for sexual assaults from 1940s. Ouellet, who served as Archbishop of Quebec between 2002 and 2010, currently faces no criminal charges, an investigation by RadioCanada.

The case dates back precisely to those years. The victim, a former scholarship holder, is a woman who identifies herself as F., who was doing a voluntary internship as a pastoral worker. The abuse, according to the lawsuit, occurred at public events. “He grabbed me and then … his hands came down a lot on my back,” says the complainant, who told what happened in the program investigation. “Pretty intrusive to, say, be my superior, the Archbishop of Quebec.” According to her version, the cardinal told her that there was nothing wrong with having a little socializing. “It made me very uncomfortable,” she lamented.

This behavior repeated itself several times. “I felt persecuted. It became more and more intrusive, more and more intense, to the point that I stopped coming to events. I tried to avoid his presence as much as possible,” the victim continued. The Archdiocese of Quebec is aware of the charges against the cardinal, as he admitted when questioned about it, but declined to comment further on the complaint.

The lawyer representing the plaintiffs recalled that Ouellet then, as archbishop, had the last word on the contracts of the establishment’s staff. “At that point, you have a young woman in her twenties facing a powerful man in a position of authority, world famous at the time, who was maybe 60 years old,” pointed out the lawyer. Moreover, when the victim decided to speak about his anguish to those around him, they told him that the cardinal is an expansive man and that she was not the only woman to have suffered this type of “problem”. with him, according to the text of the complaint.

A priest who was then under the orders of the cardinal in the diocese and who agreed to offer his testimony on condition of anonymity said in a conversation with Radio-Canada that rumors were circulating about the conduct of Ouellet, who is now 78 years old. . When he heard the story of the woman complaining, he believed her. “He came as a sheriff came to put order in the diocese of Quebec, they sent him from Rome,” he recalls. Ouellet returned to the Vatican in 2010 and was promoted to prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, the body that selects such senior Church officials. That same year, he became a cardinal. In 2018, the cardinal launched a closed defense of the pope when he was accused by the ex-nuncio in Washington, Carlo Maria Viganò, for covering up the abuses of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and asking for his resignation.

The complaint, which documents even more serious cases involving clergy officials less prominent than Ouellet, comes three weeks after Pope Francis embarked on a pastoral trip to Canada. During the journey, which the Pontiff himself described as a “penitential pilgrimage”, apologized for the abuses of the Church in the former boarding schools for indigenous minors. The pope’s apologies elicited displays of emotion; However, they didn’t sit well with everyone and also drew criticism for not going beyond words.

Follow all the international news on Facebook Yes Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.