Mounties have laid a new charge against a Roman Catholic priest who has previously avoided trial for multiple allegations of sexual abuse linked to his time in Nunavut.
RCMP said a Canada-wide arrest warrant has been issued for Johannes Rivoire, who is in his 90s and lives in Lyon, France.
“It’s about time,” Piita Irniq, an Inuit elder who has been fighting for more than a decade to have Rivoire returned to Canada, said Tuesday from Ottawa.
Nunavut RCMP said officers received a complaint last year regarding sexual assaults that occurred about 47 years ago.
Mounties said Rivoire was charged last month with sexual assault on a female.
The latest development in the investigation of the Oblate priest comes after the leader of the national organization representing the Inuit asked Pope Francis to intervene in the case during a meeting at the Vatican on Monday.
Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said he asked the Pope to “speak with Father Rivoire directly and ask him to go to Canada to face the charges.” Obed also asked the Pope to request that France step in if Rivoire is not receptive.
Rivoire was in Canada from the early 1960s to 1993, when he returned to France.
A warrant was issued for his arrest in 1998. He faced at least three charges of sexual abuse in the Nunavut communities of Arviat, Rankin Inlet and Naujaat. More than two decades later, the charges were stayed.
The Public Prosecution Service of Canada said at the time it was partly due to France’s reluctance to extradite.
Inuit leaders and politicians from senators to Nunavut premiers have continued to urge that the priest face trial. Those calls have grown with the discovery of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools run by the Catholic Church.
Bishop William McGrattan, vice-president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Monday that “justice and truth are important in this path of reconciliation.” He said Pope Francis heard that bringing the priest to Canada to face justice is important.
“The church wants to work with the relevant justice authorities, whether they be international or Canadian,” he said.
“And if there are allegations that someone has committed these abuses, that they need to be brought to justice and the church should not stand in their way but assist those who have been victims to seek justice and healing.”
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the order of which Rivoire was a member, has invited Obed for a meeting at its office in Rome on Thursday to discuss the case.
Irniq said there are at least six Inuit still living who allege Rivoire abused them. Word of the new charge is spreading quickly, he said.
“They’re happy that things are moving along,” he said. “There’s been a lot of press and a lot of talk, so I think the people I’ve talked to are very hopeful.
“It feels more like justice.”
Marius Tungilik was Irniq’s childhood friend and comrade in the struggle for Inuit self-determination. Tungilik, who died in 2012, claimed he was abused by Rivoire and was among the first Inuit to speak out about what he had suffered at residential school.
Irniq said his long fight to have Rivoire extradited was fuelled by the desire to see justice for his old friend.
“I kind of made a promise to Marius that one day I would I do something to make this happen.
“Marius would say the same thing I did,” Irniq said. “Finally. It’s about time.”
President of the Metis community, Cassidy Caron, speaks to the media in St. Peter’s Square after their meeting with Pope Francis at The Vatican, Monday, March 28, 2022.
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Indigenous leaders from Canada and survivors of the country’s notorious residential schools met with Pope Francis on Monday and told him of the abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests and school workers. They came hoping to secure a papal apology and a commitment by the church to repair the harm done.
“While the time for acknowledgement, apology and atonement is long overdue, it is never too late to do the right thing,” Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, told reporters in St. Peter’s Square after the audience.
This week’s meetings, postponed from December because of the pandemic, are part of the Canadian church and government’s efforts to respond to Indigenous demands for justice, reconciliation and reparations — long-standing demands that gained traction last year after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves outside some of the schools.
More than 150,000 native children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture, and Christianize and assimilate them into mainstream society, which previous Canadian governments considered superior.
Francis set aside several hours this week to meet privately with the delegations from the Metis and Inuit on Monday, and First Nations on Thursday, with a mental health counselor in the room for each session. The delegates then gather Friday as a group for a more formal audience, with Francis delivering an address.
The encounters Monday included prayers in the Metis and Inuit languages and other gestures of deep symbolic significance. The Inuit delegation brought a traditional oil lamp, or qulliq, that is lit whenever Inuit gather and stayed lit in the pope’s library throughout the meeting. The Inuit delegates presented Francis with a sealskin stole and a sealskin rosary case.
The Metis offered Francis a pair of red beaded moccasins, “a sign of the willingness of the Metis people to forgive if there is meaningful action from the church,” the group explained. The red dye “represents that even though Pope Francis does not wear the traditional red papal shoes, he walks with the legacy of those who came before him, the good, the great and the terrible.”
In a statement, the Vatican said each meeting lasted about an hour “and was characterized by desire on the part of the pope to listen and make space for the painful stories brought by the survivors.”
The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant at the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. That legacy of that abuse and isolation from family has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of the epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction on Canadian reservations.
Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Catholic missionary congregations.
Last May, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 gravesites near Kamloops, British Columbia, that were found using ground-penetrating radar. It was Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school and the discovery of the graves was the first of numerous, similar grim sites across the country.
Caron said Francis listened intently Monday as three of the many Metis survivors told him their personal stories of abuse at residential schools. The pope showed sorrow but offered no immediate apology. Speaking in English, he repeated the words Caron said she had emphasized in her remarks: truth, justice and healing.
“I take that as a personal commitment,” Caron said, surrounded by Metis fiddlers who accompanied her into the square.
She said what needs to follow is an apology that acknowledges the harm done, the return of Indigenous artifacts, a commitment to facilitating prosecutions of abusive priests and access to church-held records of residential schools.
Canadian Bishop Raymond Poisson, who heads the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, insisted the Vatican holds no such records and said they more likely are held by individual religious orders in Canada or at their headquarters in Rome.
Even before the grave sites were discovered, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically called for a papal apology to be delivered on Canadian soil for the church’s role in the abuses. Francis has committed to traveling to Canada, though no date for such a visit has been announced.
“Primarily, the reconciliation requires action. And we still are in need of very specific actions from the Catholic Church,” said Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, who led the Inuit delegation.
He cited the reparations the Canadian church has been ordered to pay, access to records to understand the scope of the unmarked graves, as well as Francis’ own help to find justice for victims of a Catholic Oblate priest, the Rev. Johannes Rivoire, accused of multiple cases of sexual abuse who is currently living in France.
“We often as Inuit have felt powerless over time to sometimes correct the wrongs that have been done to us,” Obed said. “We are incredibly resilient and we are great at forgiving … but we are still in search of lasting respect and the right to self-determination and the acknowledgement of that right by the institutions that harmed us.”
As part of a settlement of a lawsuit involving the government, churches and the approximately 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities.
The Catholic Church, for its part, has paid over $50 million and now intends to add $30 million more over the next five years.
The Metis delegation made clear to Francis that the church-run residential school system, and the forced removal of children from their homes, facilitated the ability of Canada authorities to take indigenous lands while also teaching Metis children “that they were not to love who they are as Metis people,” Caron said.
“Our children came home hating who they were, hating their language, hating their culture, hating their tradition,” Caron said. “They had no love. But our survivors are so resilient. They are learning to love.”
The Argentine pope is no stranger to offering apologies for his own errors and what he himself has termed the “crimes” of the institutional church.
During a 2015 visit to Bolivia, he apologized for the sins, crimes and offenses committed by the church against Indigenous peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas. In Dublin, Ireland, in 2018, he offered a sweeping apology to those sexually and physically abused over generations.
That same year, he met privately with three Chilean sex abuse survivors whom he had discredited by backing a bishop they accused of covering up their abuse. In a series of meetings that echo those now being held for the Canadian delegates, Francis listened, and apologized.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) plans to begin a search as soon as next month in the archives of a Roman Catholic order that ran 48 residential schools in Canada, including the institution in Kamloops, B.C., where last year more than 200 unmarked graves were discovered.
A Catholic entity that ran residential schools in Canada will soon open its archive in Rome, bringing some hope to survivors searching for records.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) plans to begin a search as soon as next month in the archives of a Roman Catholic order that ran 48 residential schools in Canada, including the institution in Kamloops, B.C., where last year more than 200 unmarked graves were discovered.
Raymond Frogner, head of archives for the NCTR, will be visiting the Rome archives of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate to review and digitize residential school-related records.
It’s the first time any Canadian researcher has been granted access to the Oblate General Archives.
“It’s quite a wild card,” Frogner said. “We’ve been told there’s correspondence there and other documentation, but we are still a bit in the dark of what is held there.”
He said the NCTR is still negotiating with the Oblates to access the personnel files of priests and residential school staff. He said the Oblates are seeking restrictions around records from those members who are still alive.
Frogner said the long-term goal is to have everything open for research, access and use.
The Oblates have so far provided more than 40,000 files to the NCTR through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but the discovery in May 2021 on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School led the order to seek this agreement, said Rev. Ken Thorson, leader of the Oblates in Canada.
Rev. Ken Thorson, leader of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Canada, said the order has a significant contribution to make to ensure the truth of the residential school experience is known as part of the healing process.
“The Oblates have been moved by the events of the last year,” said Thorson, who is based in Ottawa.
“It was my feeling that we should ensure that every document that might be related to the residential school history should be made available.”
‘These documents do not belong in Rome’
Thorson acknowledged that the Oblates have a significant contribution to make to ensure the truth of the residential school experience is known and to facilitate a deeper understanding of this history as part of the ongoing healing process.
“This is the most important work that I’ve been given to do as an Oblate leader,” he said.
Thorson said the Oblate archives in Rome, which are separate from the Vatican archives, could contain letters from missionaries to religious leaders about their work.
Evelyn Korkmaz, a survivor of the former St. Anne’s Residential School, has repeatedly called on the Roman Catholic Church to release all residential school records.
Residential school survivor Evelyn Korkmaz said she is hopeful the agreement between the NCTR and the Oblates will reveal more information about St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont., which the Oblates ran and she attended from 1969 to 1972.
“It’s time to open that door of horrors and take a look at what’s inside,” Korkmaz said.
“These documents do not belong in Rome. They belong here, in Canada.”
Records can’t have any restrictions, survivor says
Korkmaz says she wants to make sure other Catholic entities, including the Vatican, release all residential school records in their possession, adding that there should be no restrictions on the files.
“We need to know information on priests and brothers or nuns who have passed away,” Korkmaz said.
“But we also need to know of the priests or nuns or cardinals, whatever, that are still alive today because those ones are the ones that are continuing to do damage.”
Frogner said that records still held by the Oblates in Rome are vital to the work of the NCTR, which was created to be the main repository for the documented history of the residential school system in Canada.
More documents identified in Canada
Frogner said the NCTR has already identified Oblate records held by its archives in Canada, including more than 1,000 boxes held in Alberta. The centre is working to access those records through a separate research agreement with the Catholic entity.
More than 1,000 other files are located at the Société historique de Saint-Boniface in northern Manitoba, while other documentation is held at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, he said.
Before Frogner goes to Rome, an Indigenous delegation from Canada is heading to the Vatican for meetings with Pope Francis.
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Grey Nuns of the Cross ran the former St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont.
The delegates are expected to appeal for an official apology from the Pope for the Church’s role in running residential schools and press for the disclosure of more records, which they have discussed with the NCTR.
Korkmaz said she would acknowledge a papal apology, but it wouldn’t mean much to her because it would be “hollow words.”
“I’m more concerned about the documentation than an apology that he’s forced to say,” Korkmaz said.
“What would mean more to me is bringing those documents back to Canada.”
It is hard to know anymore how one should react to yet more pontification from the Catholic church regarding homosexuality.
Contemptuous silence? Outrage? A snort of derisory laughter because, after all, there is something almost comical about a bunch of lace-by-day-and-leather-by-night men, clutching their Grecian 2000 and swishing their surplices indignantly, while denouncing gay people from deep inside their clerical closets. More of which later.
This time, it’s Southwark Diocese, where John Fisher boys school is located. The headteacher and board of governors arranged a visit from author Simon James Green.
Green is gay and, as if that’s not enough to make him burn, has a book for young people with – Les Dawson whisper – an actual gay character in it and some sensitive handling of LGBT issues. The Diocese cancelled the visit, sacked some governors, promised retribution against the disobedient in the coming weeks, then claimed to be taking “a stand against tyranny”, which is a bit like Putin claiming to be on a peacekeeping mission.
The tyranny of what? The existence of gay people? The existence of equality legislation?
But the real dark humour behind all this is Southwark Diocese’s own past. Their seminarians attend St John’s, a troubled joint if ever there was one, according to students who have contacted me over the years.
The problem is hypocrisy, not homosexuality
In the 1990s, St John’s had a moral theologian who became quite renowned. He wrote philosophy books, had a liking for scarves by the luxury Italian designer Ferragamo, and was a fan of the singer Cher. (There’s a clue right there, dear reader.)
In 1998, he was a keynote speaker for the Catholic church at an event on human sexuality but, after that, you don’t find too many references to him. Maybe because he subsequently left and lived as a woman. And we wouldn’t want to talk about that, would we?
Good luck to her. The problem here is not homosexuality or transgender choices. It’s hypocrisy.
Richard Sipe estimated that 50% of priests were sexually active, and 30% or more were gay
The late Richard Sipe, an American ex-priest who spent years researching priestly celibacy globally, estimated that 50% of priests were sexually active at any one time, 6% were paedophiles, and up to half were gay. “A conservative estimate of gay Catholic clergy is 30%,” he wrote in an article in 2012, “[But] many Vatican insiders speculate that the accurate figure is closer to 50%.”
God loves you, brothers and sisters. You are made in His likeness. Unless you are gay, in which case he thinks you are intrinsically disordered. Hard to know why so many clergy parrot that line, given how many of them are homosexual.
What does banning a gay author achieve?
As a journalist, priests have told me about rent boys, sex in parks, gay saunas in Paris and “insider” gay parties attended by even senior clerics with trusted friends. Love and commitment were off limits, but stranger-danger thrills could be followed by confession and some pompous public pronouncements to cover the tracks.
Having attended a convent school, it’s the teenage boys at John Fisher School that I feel sorry for; those who struggle with shame and guilt and depression because they are told – even from those hiding in clergy closets – that they are sick and shameful.
What did they think Green would do in his book-related visit? Issue a gay sex manual?
As for Simon James Green, he didn’t even rate a mention in the church’s published comments. He was nothing, cancelled out of existence, ostracised like some biblical leper.
What did they think Green would do in his book-related visit? Issue a gay sex manual? And what would they achieve by banning him? The eradication of homosexuality? “Expecto patronum!” As Harry Potter would say. That should do it.
Breaching equality legislation
You might expect a little more Christ-like kindness. You would certainly expect more humility from a church riddled with sex scandals. Cardinal Keith O’Brien. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Countless paedophile scandals in every country where Catholicism exists.
But, no sooner are they knocked off their public soapboxes than they jump right back on again as if nothing has happened, trying to seize the old moral high ground while the trickles fall from their bloodied noses.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned after multiple allegations of inappropriate and predatory sexual conduct
The church has nurtured a sense of being “other”, both legally and morally. The Vatican is legally an independent state, with its own leader. It has its own – corrupt – banking system, implicated in fraud yet again recently in the Swiss banking scandal. Even its own diplomatic corps.
But John Fisher is a voluntary-aided faith school: the state pays its running costs. If the church wants to ignore equality legislation, perhaps the appropriate reaction is to make clear that the state will no longer pay to allow a scandal-ridden organisation to breach its equality laws on the grounds of “faith”.
Roman Catholic Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, accused of sexually abusing young men in northern Argentina, sits in court, in Oran, Argentina March 3, 2022.
by David Alire
A Catholic bishop accused of sexually abusing young men studying to be priests was found guilty by a court in northern Argentina on Friday, capping over a week of often graphic testimony in the latest criminal abuse case to hit the global Church.
The high-profile trial played out in the home country of Pope Francis, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires and the first Latin American pontiff of the Church.
Gustavo Zanchetta, the former bishop of Oran in Argentina’s northern province of Salta, was convicted of sexually abusing two former seminarians, which prosecutors said in a statement was aggravated due to his status as a cleric.
The court handed down a prison sentence of 4 1/2 years to begin immediately.
Zanchetta had denied all charges in the criminal trial, as well as a separate Vatican canon law investigation, insisting he had “a good and healthy relationship” with all seminarians, according to summaries of the closed-door trial provided by the local judiciary. read more
“We’re going to appeal,” Zanchetta lawyer Javier Belda told Reuters in an email.
Summaries of testimony provided by the judiciary included witnesses describing unwanted touching and sexual advances by the bishop, as well as requests for massages and gifts he doled out to seminarians he was said to favor.
Other witnesses testified to the discovery of porn on the bishop’s phone as well as a history of visiting pornographic websites on a church computer he used. read more
Zanchetta often spoke about his close friendship with the pope, according to trial testimony.
Zanchetta had worked for the Church in Rome, tapped in 2017 to help lead the Vatican’s Administration of Patrimony of the Apostolic See, a financial and accounting office that also manages its properties in Italy. He was re-appointed to the job by the pope in 2020 despite an ongoing criminal investigation.
BishopAccountability.org, a U.S.-based abuse tracking group, hailed Zanchetta’s conviction in a statement on Friday.
“This is a stunning ruling from the Pope’s homeland. It’s a sign that even where the Catholic Church wields power, civil societies increasingly will not tolerate sexual abuse of young adults by powerful figures,” said the group.
It also blasted the pontiff for what it described as his “disturbing” refusal to provide prosecutors with files from the Vatican’s own investigation into the case.
“Pope Francis should finally condemn the bishop’s crimes publicly and strip him of his title and privileges,” the statement said.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Three priests first accused the Argentine bishop of sexually abusing seminarians, as well as abuse of power and financial mismanagement, in 2018, which they claimed took place at the Oran seminary the bishop founded a couple of years earlier.
A local prosecutor called for Zanchetta’s arrest the following year, but the case has dragged on amid legal delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Vatican’s investigation.
