Cardinal Ouellet thanks Pope Francis and said he will remain busy working on lessons that emerged from a priesthood symposium he helped organize last year
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Canada’s highest-ranking Catholic cleric and a onetime papal front-runner, stepped down on Monday amid sexual misconduct allegations that he has vehemently denied.
He will remain a cardinal for life and is eligible to vote for the next pope until he reaches age 80. A former archbishop of Quebec City, Cardinal Ouellet was accused of inappropriately massaging and touching the lower back of a woman who was serving as a pastoral agent in the diocese between 2008 and 2010.as part of a class-action lawsuit alleging that at least 85 members of the Quebec City diocese committed sexual assaults from the 1940s onward. The allegations have not been tested in court.
Paméla Groleau alleged that Cardinal Ouellet, who was then an archbishop, first touched her inappropriately when she was 23 years old, at an event for the Sisters of Charity in Quebec City. Shortly after being introduced to the cardinal, she claims, she felt the hands of a man forcefully massaging her shoulders – and when she turned, she saw that it was him. He smiled at her and rubbed her back before parting, she says in the statement of claim.
Alain Arsenault, Ms. Groleau’s lawyer, declined to comment on Cardinal Ouellet’s resignation. The diocese of Quebec City did not respond to a request for comment.a second accusation The statement of claim in Ms. Groleau’s allegation said she wrote to Pope Francis about Cardinal Ouellet at the end of January, 2021. She was informed by e-mail a month later that the pontiff had appointed a Jesuit priest, Jacques Servais, to investigate. The claim says Father Servais appeared to have little grasp of the intricacies of dealing with allegations of sexual abuse, that he might be an associate of Cardinal Ouellet and that he was last in touch with Ms. Groleau on March 23, 2021.
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