Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet resigns amid sexual assault allegations - The Washington Post

Instead, the quality work said that Pope Francis had accepted Ouellet’s resignation “upon reaching the property limit” for cardinals, which is 75. Ouellet, 78, reached the bounds a fewer years agone — but truthful person respective different heads of large Vatican departments, according to the independent National Catholic Reporter.

His status could bring much scrutiny to the allegations. It besides draws attraction to Francis’s handling of the affair, coming conscionable a week aft the Catholic person told an interviewer that helium wanted much “transparency” wrong the church’s handling of abuse.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the advocacy radical BishopAccountability.org, noted that the announcement came little than 2 weeks aft a French Catholic work reported connected caller intersexual maltreatment allegations against Ouellet.

“The timing is suggestive, and it raises troubling questions astir the Pope’s imaginable complicity,” Barrett Doyle said successful a statement. She said Francis should beryllium much transparent: “Is his removal from bureau a sanction?”

Ouellet was erstwhile considered a reformer wrong the Vatican connected issues of abuse. He called the kid intersexual maltreatment outrage that engulfed the Catholic Church successful Canada “a root of large shame and tremendous scandal” successful 2012 and said the church’s handling of the allegations was “often inadequate.”

But successful August of past year, a class-action suit filed against the Archdiocese of Quebec elaborate caller accusations against him personally.

In the lawsuit, Ouellet was accused of inappropriate touching, including kisses, massages and remarks, by a pistillate initially identified lone arsenic “F.” According to the lawsuit, the incidents began astir 15 years ago, erstwhile Ouellet was archbishop of Quebec and the pistillate was a pastoral intern.

Paméla Groleau aboriginal publically revealed herself arsenic “F” and said that she was facing “threats and intimidation” from the Catholic Church. Ouellet denied each allegations. In December, helium made the highly antithetic determination of countersuing Groleau for defamation, seeking $100,000 successful damages.

The Catholic work Golias Hebdo this period reported connected a 2nd allegation of intersexual misconduct made against Ouellet successful 2020. The French play published a 2021 missive from Cardinal Gérald Lacroix, the existent archbishop of Quebec City, telling the unnamed complainant that the allegations were not being pursued.

In a connection released to Canadian media aft the study was published, Ouellet denied the allegations and said helium had “nothing to hide,” with nary complaints filed against him successful civilian oregon transgression court.

The allegations against Ouellet are awkward for Francis, not lone due to the fact that helium was considered a adjacent state to the pope successful the Vatican. Although Ouellet was appointed by Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, Francis kept Ouellet connected acold beyond his regular five-year term.

Ouellet was besides the look of respective Vatican responses to allegations of abuse, including the alleged intersexual misconduct of erstwhile Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. Ouellet initially dismissed the allegations against McCarrick arsenic a “political crippled that lacks immoderate existent basis.”

A religion probe and proceedings recovered McCarrick blameworthy of “sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults” and removed him from the clergy. He’s the highest ranking subordinate of the religion known to person been laicized.

Groleau reported Ouellet to the Vatican successful 2020 and reached retired to Francis himself successful 2021, according to the class-action lawsuit. In a connection successful effect to the lawsuit, the Vatican said that Francis had determined determination were “insufficient grounds” for a canonical investigation.

It soon emerged that the Vatican had charged the probe of the substance to a priest, the Rev. Jacques Servais, who knew Ouellet good and with whom helium was a chap subordinate of a small spiritual association.