Retired Quebec judge says he believes sexual abuse allegations against former Nunavut priest

— Canadian Oblates commissioned Andre Denis to investigate handling of allegations against Johannes Rivoire

Former Quebec Superior Court justice André Denis leads the Oblate Safeguarding Commission, an independent review of historical allegations of sexual abuse against Johannes Rivoire in present-day Nunavut.

A retired Quebec Superior Court judge, in a report commissioned by the Canadian Oblates, says he believes allegations made against former Nunavut priest Johannes Rivoire of sexually abusing children in the territory are true.

The report, written by Andre Denis, also suggests the Catholic church was not aware of the allegations made against Rivoire at the time because the RCMP didn’t notify them.

“Rivoire did not tell the whole truth to his superiors, to his confrères, to the Inuit for whom he had pastoral responsibility, and he himself denies a reality that has nevertheless been demonstrated,” Denis wrote in a 57-page report released Tuesday.

Denis’s report is not a legal finding of guilt. His investigation makes conclusions based on a “preponderance of evidence,” and not “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Rivoire, an Oblate priest from France, has long faced allegations he sexually abused children in Nunavut in the 1960s and 1970s. He spent more than 30 years working as a priest in the territory, mostly in Arviat and Naujaat.

Rivoire, who is 92 and lives in Lyon, France, and his lawyer have denied all of the allegations against him. CBC has reached out to Rivoire’s lawyer about the report, but has not received a response.

The Oblates of Mary Immaculate, OMI Lacombe Canada and the Oblates of the Province of France hired Denis to investigate how past allegations against Rivoire were addressed within the congregation.

“The scandal for the plaintiffs is that Joannès Rivoire remains a religious despite all he has done. This is a reality the victims do not accept,” Denis wrote.

Tall man in black frock, in black and white. — Rev. Johannes Rivoire moved to Nunavut in the 1960s and stayed there until returning to France in 1993.

6 years before charges were laid

Denis travelled to France, Italy and Canada, including Nunavut, where he interviewed some of Rivoire’s alleged victims.

He also met at length with Rivoire, who denied the allegations but claimed he had a consenting sexual relationship with a woman in the territory.

Denis also concluded the Catholic church didn’t try to help him escape the Canadian justice system.

Three charges of sexual abuse were laid against Rivoire in 1998. They were stayed in 2017 after the Crown decided there was no reasonable prospect of conviction.

A new charge was brought forward in 2022 and an arrest warrant was issued for Rivoire.

Days before the first complaint was filed with the RCMP in 1993, Rivoire fled Canada for France.

Denis says Rivoire told the church he needed to return home to take care of his elderly parents.

The RCMP finally charged Rivoire in 1998.

“The RCMP had no communication with the Oblates, nor did they notify them of anything throughout the legal process,” Denis wrote.

“Had these complaints been brought before the court in 1993, it is possible to believe that Joannès Rivoire would have returned to Nunavut to face Canadian justice. He probably could have been persuaded to do so.”

Denis says the Oblates were not informed of Rivoire’s charges until more than a decade later.

Five seated people look at the camera. — Delegates with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. speaking to media in Paris, France, in an effort to push the French government to extradite Johannes Rivoire in 2022.

Inuit survivors began speaking publicly about what they went through. A delegation also travelled to France in 2022, and asked that Rivoire return to Canada and face trial, and advocates for survivors of child sexual abuse in France also campaigned on the issue. The Oblates in both countries supported the request.

Although the priest has faced several criminal charges from the Canadian courts, France does not typically extradite people, and in October 2022, the country denied the latest request for Rivoire’s extradition.

Last month, leadership in Rome ruled against Rivoire’s dismissal from the Oblates.

‘I was angry’

Tanya Tungilik, whose late father Marius Tungilik had accused Rivoire of sexual abuse, said she had mixed feelings after reading the report.

“I was angry at a lot of parts but glad that [Denis] said that Rivoire was guilty of the crimes … that he believed us,” she said on Tuesday.

A woman wearing a blue traditional Inuit amauti — Tanya Tungilik, pictured in Rankin Inlet in 2022. Tungilik, whose late father Marius Tungilik had accused Rivoire of sexual abuse, said she believes RCMP also need to be held accountable for why Rivoire was not charged until 1998.

Tungilik said she was troubled by how long it took for the RCMP to investigate the allegations brought against Rivoire.

“Why did it take so long?” she said. “They need to be held accountable, too.”

She also said she doesn’t believe Denis’s claim that the Oblates didn’t know about the allegations made against Rivoire.

“I’m glad that it’s out there,” Tungilik said. “But I’m disappointed and angry that he says that the Oblates didn’t know at all.”

Facts hidden

Denis met with Rivoire in Lyon, France, in the spring of 2023, but explains in the report that he doesn’t believe “the version of events” that Rivoire told him.

Instead, Rivoire left Canada “hiding this terrible reality” from church authorities. He told a “true but incomplete story” that he was only returning to France to care for his sick parents.

Reflecting on meeting the Inuit delegates in 2022, Denis said Rivoire told him he thought those who were accusing him “may be trying to get money out of the Oblates.”

Denis’ research of historical documents found Rivoire “did not tell the whole truth to his superiors.”

His report quotes a 2013 conversation between Rivoire and Father Yves Chalvet de Récy, when Chalvet had just learned of the arrest warrant for Rivoire.

At that point, Rivoire is said to have told Chalvet the children he was accused of abusing “were looking for tenderness that they didn’t have in their families.”

“If I’m not innocent, the children aren’t either,” Rivoire told Chalvet.

“It’s true that I’m not innocent, but allegations of sexual assaults on minors are a fabrication. That’s why I came back to France in the first place.”

Ken Thorson, provincial lead of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Lacombe, poses for a photo. — Ken Thorson, provincial lead of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Lacombe, says he accept the report’s findings.

Rev. Ken Thorson, with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Lacombe Canada, said they accept the report’s findings “with a heavy heart.”

“We wish to apologize unequivocally to anyone who was harmed by an Oblate priest and to continue taking concrete steps towards transparency and transformation, informed by guidance from victims, survivors and Inuit representatives.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

March 19, 2024March 18, 2024

Pope meets with child protection board as events outside Vatican show abuse scandal isn’t going away

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis sought to encourage his child protection board on Thursday to continue helping victims, as new developments outside the Vatican underscored that the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal isn’t going away anytime soon.

Francis met with his Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which is expected to soon release the first-ever audit of safeguarding procedures and policies church-wide.

But as that report is being compiled, church officials in Switzerland reported a surge in victims coming forward since the September publication of a bombshell report that found over 1,000 cases of abuse since the mid-20th century in a country with a relatively small Catholic population.

The diocese in northwestern Basel, for example, reported that more than half of the suspected 183 cases in the last 13 years emerged in the last six months. Swiss news agency SDA-Keystone reported at least 70 other cases across four other dioceses since the report was issued.

Closer to home, a criminal court in Sicily handed down an important verdict this week against a priest whom the Vatican apparently exonerated on a technicality even after one of his victims wrote to Francis, begging for him to intervene.

The case was being closely watched since Italy’s Catholic hierarchy has only recently and reluctantly begun confronting its legacy of abuse in a country where the issue is still somewhat taboo.

The verdict by the tribunal in Enna sentenced the priest, the Rev. Giuseppe Rugolo, to four and a half years in prison for attempted sexual violence and violence-related charges against three minors. The court also held his diocese, Piazza Armerina, Sicily, responsible for paying civil damages and legal fees, according to the sentence on Tuesday.

Piazza Armeria Bishop Rosario Gisana was caught on intercepted wiretaps confessing to having covered up for the priest. But a lawyer for the diocese, Gabriele Cantaro, stressed in a statement Thursday that the liability didn’t stem from the actions of Gisana or his predecessor, but merely from the diocese’s general responsibility for the actions of its priests.

According to the newspaper Domani, which covered the case closely, the Vatican’s sex abuse office shelved the case on technical grounds because Rugolo was only a seminarian when the abuse occurred. The Vatican’s in-house norms at the time only called for canonical sanctions against priests who abused minors, not seminarians.

Il Messaggero newspaper reported in 2021 that one of Rugolo’s victims wrote to Francis directly, begging him to intervene after he and his parents had spent years trying to get the church to take action against Rugolo, who was sent to a diocese in northern Italy after the accusations were raised.

Amid Italian media coverage of the case, Francis on Nov. 6 heartily praised Gisana when the bishop led a group of pilgrims to the Vatican.

“This bishop is great. He was persecuted, calumnied but he’s been firm, always correct, a correct man,” Francis said in remarks that outraged victims’ advocates.

Francis told his child protection advisers on Thursday that listening to victims was crucial to helping them heal.

“In our ecclesial ministry of protecting minors, closeness to victims of abuse is no abstract concept, but a very concrete reality, comprised of listening, intervening, preventing and assisting,” he said in remarks read by an aide as Francis continues to recover from the flu.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

March 15, 2024March 14, 2024

Banned priest Tony Flannery to break silence on fate of the Catholic Church

Fr Tony Flattery has been unable to celebrate mass publicly since his faculties were revoked in a Vatican crackdown on liberal views.

By Lorna Siggins

Banned Redemptorist priest Tony Flannery plans to question the survival of the Roman Catholic church at a public talk in Galway shortly before Easter Sunday.

Fr Flannery (77), who was suspended from public ministry by the Vatican in 2012, intends to give his views on whether “religious belief as we have known it can survive in modern Ireland”.

He also intends to pay tribute to Pope Francis for “freeing up discussion, areas of study and the search for the truth”.

The Redemptorist priest had been disciplined in 2012 for publicly expressing support for women’s ordination and same-sex marriage, and for expressing more liberal views on homosexuality.

Although he has been outspoken since his suspension and was profiled in a recent TG4 documentary, he has not given a public talk with a question and answer session in six years.

He says the talk he intends to give in the Clayton Hotel, Galway on March 27 was scheduled to be given in church property several months ago.

However, when the organisers learned that the ban imposed on him applied not only to speaking in churches but to speaking in “all church-owned property”, a new venue had to be found.

Fr Flannery says that in spite of his suspension, he has “studied and read” and has been contemplating “how best to address the falling attendances at Mass” and “the falling away in general from the Catholic faith”.

“If we take the traditional indications of the health of the faith as measured by the Catholic Church… then all the signs are that it is in serious trouble, and that the faith is in the terminal stage of ill health,” he says.

“Churches are emptying or are being frequented only by the older generation,” he says, noting that “seminaries are closing down, and priest numbers are declining rapidly”.

“There appear to be few, if any signs of new growth – but that is by no means the full story.

“We are living in a really interesting time in the [Catholic] church since the arrival of the papacy of Francis. Even in the 11 years since his appointment he has brought about a great deal of change,”he says.

“I have no doubt that the biggest legacy Pope Francis will leave from his time in charge is that he has freed up discussion, areas of study and the search for truth in the church – all of which had been seriously restricted for many centuries by rigid imposition of official teachings.

“The “pre-Francis” church had adopted the position that it had the full truth, and that it had nothing to learn from the world.

“Francis, on the other hand, realised that in order for the church to be relevant, it must engage with modern life, and be part of the debate about the future of the world and of people.”

He cites as examples of that attitude change “the extent to which Francis has engaged in the debate about the destruction of the environment and the necessity of facing up to climate change”.

Fr Flannery says all are welcome to his talk in Galway’s Clayton Hotel, Briarhill, on March 27, and will allow for a question and answer session.

Last year, the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) and Lay Catholic Group (LCG) called for him to be restored to the ministry and said he had experienced a “grave injustice”.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

March 14, 2024March 13, 2024

Pope Francis laicizes North Dakota priest after sexual assault guilty plea

By Daniel Payne

Pope Francis has ordered the laicization of a North Dakota priest who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in that state.

Diocese of Fargo Bishop John Folda said in a statement this month that former priest Neil Pfeifer “received a dispensation from the clerical state (laicization) from Pope Francis” effective March 8.

Pfeifer himself “sought the dispensation after adult women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct,” Folda said in his statement.

“Mr. Pfeifer pleaded guilty on July 13, 2023, to a misdemeanor charge of sexual assault in Stutsman County,” the bishop said.

Laicization is the term for when a priest has been dismissed from the clerical state. An individual who is confirmed as a priest will always remain one, but laicization takes away his ability to licitly execute the functions of the priesthood, except in the extreme situation of encountering someone who is in immediate danger of death.

Someone who has lost the clerical state also no longer has the canonical right to be financially supported by the Church.

Often, a man who is laicized is also dispensed from the obligation of celibacy and permitted to marry, though this is not always the case, especially when someone has been involuntarily removed from the clerical state.

Folda in his statement noted that the decision to laicize a priest “is not made by the local diocese or bishop but is determined by the Holy See.”

“Laicization means that Mr. Pfeifer has been returned to the lay state and may no longer exercise priestly ministry,” the bishop said. “As a result, in accord with canon law, he may no longer celebrate Mass, hear confessions, or administer other sacraments.”

“Laicization does not invalidate sacraments that he previously administered,” the prelate added.

“When members of the clergy or others representing the Church abuse someone, they violate a sacred trust,” Folda said in his statement.

The diocese announced in 2021 that Pfiefer had been appointed the pastor of St. James Basilica in Jamestown, St. Margaret Mary in Buchanan, and St. Mathias in Windsor.

Pfeifer’s term at those parishes was to last for six years, until 2027.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

March 9, 2024March 8, 2024

‘Rainbow Catholics’

— Mexican church welcomes LGBTQ community

Regina, who identifies as non-binary, speaks at the Sagrada Familia church in Mexico City before a mass that promotes the inclusion of the LGBTQ community

As a teenager, Victor Rodriguez felt excluded from his religion for being gay, but now he’s welcome at inclusive masses in a Mexico City church, where same-sex couples have also begun receiving blessings with the pope’s endorsement.

Speaking during the sermon, the 39-year-old said that when he was younger he was pressured to leave the seminary because of his homosexuality.

Accompanied by his husband, he asked the congregation to pray for people who reject them: “For the priest who took me out of the church for being the way I am.”

The inclusive masses at the majestic Sagrada Familia in Mexico City’s Roma district have taken on added significance following the Catholic Church’s approval in December of blessings for same-sex couples.

The following month, the first two such blessings were given in the Sagrada Familia after the inclusive mass.

“It was a miracle from God. We’re very Catholic. I never thought that a church would accept me with my partner, my sexuality,” said Arturo Manjarrez, accompanied by his husband Carlos Sanchez.

Mexico City approved same-sex marriage in 2010, becoming a pioneer in Latin America.

Twelve years later the Supreme Court legalized it throughout the Catholic-majority country.

Jesuit priest Gonzalo Rosas has worked with the LGBTQ community for more than a decade, officiating a monthly inclusive service at the Sagrada Familia that is now replicated in three churches in the capital.

Victor Rodriguez says he felt excluded from the church as a teenager for being gay, but is now welcomed at inclusive masses in Mexico City

When he arrived at the church in 2013, he “found a lot of sexual diversity,” said the 68-year-old priest, who uses inclusive language in his sermons.

“I looked for organizations, young people to talk to. They told me ‘father, the church excludes us’ … I invited them to see what path we could take together and the idea of a mass arose,” he said.

Reconciliation with church

There was already a choir made up of young members of the LGBTQ community who had left the seminary and used to meet to pray in a house, said choir director Eduardo Andrade.

Jesuit priest Gonzalo Rosas holds a regular mass in Mexico City welcoming the LGBTQ community into the Catholic church

After the arrival of Father Gonzalo, the choir felt able to be more open about its members’ sexual orientation, said Andrade, an activist with Colectivo Teresa, a theological organization aimed at LGBTQ people.

Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “blessed” in rainbow colors — a symbol of LGBTQ pride — he described the inclusive mass as a “unique” experience in Latin America because of their frequency and openness.

Some parishioners, however, were uncomfortable and distanced themselves, said Andrade, a member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, which works for the inclusion of the LGBTQ community in the Roman Catholic Church.

Father Gonzalo recalled that his superiors authorized inclusive events on the condition that they did not become politicized.

The choir’s members include Regina, a teacher who identifies as non-binary and remembers attending the mass for the first time dressed more like a straight person.

“They said to me, ‘where’s the outfit, where’s the makeup?’ And when I entered, I saw that it was totally different. I reconciled with the Church,” Regina said, wearing makeup and holding a fan.

‘All human beings’

But change is now in the air.

In December, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, its department for Roman Catholic doctrine, said priests could bless “irregular” and same-sex couples under certain circumstances.

Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word "blessed" in rainbow colors, LGBTQ activist Eduardo Andrade leads a choir practice in Mexico City — Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “blessed” in rainbow colors, LGBTQ activist Eduardo Andrade leads a choir practice in Mexico City

Priests can only perform blessings for same-sex couples, divorcees, or unmarried couples in “non-ritualized” contexts, and never in relation to weddings or civil unions.

A third of Mexico’s 32 states accept adoption by same-sex couples, and Father Gonzalo says he has baptized a couple of babies with two mothers.

Andrade acknowledged that for some members of the LGBTQ community the blessings authorized by Pope Francis did not go far enough.

But “it’s better to take a small but safe step,” he said.

In a neighboring district, Vincent Schwahn, a retired Anglican priest from the United States whose husband is Mexican, welcomed one step “in 2,000 years of homophobia.”

But he criticized the restrictions on same-sex blessings, which he described as “like blessing a car,” and said that “all parishes must be inclusive.”

Although the majority of the attendees at the inclusive mass are members of the LGBTQ community or their friends and family, others were also participating for the first time.

“This is what we have to learn — we’re all human beings. We all have to respect each other,” said 77-year-old Irma Juarez.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!