Pope Francis has ruled out opening an investigation into Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet for lack of evidence, a Vatican spokesman said on Thursday. Ouellet was accused of sexually abusing a woman between 2008 and 2010, when he was Archbishop of Quebec, in a lawsuit released earlier this week.
The 78-year-old cardinal is the current prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, one of the most important positions in the Vatican government. In some circles, his name is suggested as one of Francis’ possible successors.
The accusation against the cardinal was admitted in May by the Superior Court of Quebec and made directly to the Vatican last year, but was only released on Tuesday (16). A woman identified by the letter F claims that Ouellet improperly touched her several times when she was 23 and doing an internship as a pastoral worker. She says that Cardinal Ouellet kissed her and “slipped his hand” down her back “to her buttocks”.
When she plucked up the courage to report the episode, she would have discovered that she was not the only woman who had gone through a similar situation, court documents say. In 2020, she told a committee discussing the issue in Québec that she had also been a victim of sexual misconduct by another clergyman.
According to a note issued by the Vatican, the pontiff delegated to Father Jacques Servais the task of conducting a preliminary inquiry in response to the first accusations against the cardinal. Servais concluded that there were not enough elements to proceed with the investigation and, when faced with more recent allegations, he reiterated his position.
“Neither in the written report sent to the Holy Father, nor in the testimony via Zoom that I later took in the presence of a member of the Diocesan Committee, did this person make any accusation that would give rise to such an investigation,” said the priest chosen by Francis.
The case came to light three weeks after Pope Francis’ trip to Canada, in which the pontiff apologized for abuses committed by church members at boarding schools for indigenous people and publicly acknowledged the mistakes and horrors committed over decades.
The complaint against the cardinal is among the testimonies of 101 people who allege they have been abused or sexually harassed by more than 80 members of the clergy and lay officials of the diocese of Quebec since June 1940, according to court documents.
The scandal now adds to the flood of allegations of sexual abuse committed decades ago by religious against minors around the world – a crime that Pope Francis has promised to punish severely.
