Many dropped the ball, Montreal report finds

The Catholic Register, 02 December 2020

The Boucher case was rife with incompetence and passing-the-buck from the beginning.

The Boucher Report, released on Nov. 25 by the Archdiocese of Montreal, makes for distressing reading. The tale told therein also illustrates how failures in Canada may have contributed to the significant reforms made by Pope Francis last year aimed at changing the culture of episcopal governance.

Brian Boucher should never have been ordained a priest. Thrown out of the seminary in 1990 and subject to three psychological assessments for behaviour ranging from peculiar to creepy to belligerent, he nevertheless persuaded the Archdiocese of Montreal to ordain him a priest in 1996. So pressing is the paucity of priestly vocations that sometimes a man would be advanced to holy orders even if the red flags were carried in procession at the ordination Mass.

Boucher’s case showed the strengths and weaknesses of Church governance in Montreal regarding abusive behaviour. The diocese began investigating Boucher in 2015, strangely enough in response to a complaint from Boucher that he himself had suffered unwanted sexual attention from another priest. That turned out to be a lie, as Boucher was the aggressor and not the aggrieved. The archdiocese was diligent in suspending Boucher and beginning a canonical process against him.

In 2016, there was, for the first time, an allegation that Boucher had sexually abused a minor. Again, the archdiocese acted properly. Boucher was subsequently laicized by the Church and convicted in court; he is currently in prison.

The 276-page report, commissioned by the archdiocese and conducted independently by former Quebec Superior Court Justice Pepita Capriolo, shows how the proper protocols were observed regarding allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.

So that’s good. Little else is. Short of an allegation concerning a minor, the Boucher case was rife with incompetence and passing-the-buck from the beginning. There was sufficient evidence that he should never have been hired to mow the lawn at a parish, let alone be appointed its pastor.

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