Canadian Cardinal Accused of Sexual Assault
Cardinal Gérald Lacroix of Québec has been mentioned as a possible future pope
Cardinal Gérald Lacroix of Québec, a senior adviser to Pope Francis, has been accused of sexual assault in a class-action suit in Canada.
The cardinal has been accused by a plaintiff, whose name hasn’t been revealed, of sexually touching her without her consent on different occasions in 1987 and 1988, when she was 17 years old.
The allegations are part of a class-action lawsuit against the Catholic Archdiocese of Québec, authorized in 2022.
On Friday, the archdiocese announced that Lacroix would be taking a temporary leave of absence until the situation was resolved. “He categorically denies the allegations, which he judges as unfounded,” said the emailed statement, which was written in French.
Lacroix, 66 years old, has been archbishop of Québec since 2011. Francis made him a cardinal in 2014. The Canadian sits on the international Council of Cardinals, which advises the pope on reform of the Vatican and governance of the universal church. He is also a member of the Council for the Economy, which oversees the financial affairs of the Holy See—the central administration of the church in Rome and its diplomatic network around the world.
Lacroix has been mentioned as a possible successor to Francis.
The same class-action lawsuit includes allegations against Lacroix’s immediate predecessor as archbishop of Québec, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who retired last year as head of the Vatican office that advises the pope on the selection of bishops. A woman accused him of having touched her inappropriately during her stint as an intern at the archdiocese between 2008 and 2010, when she was 24.
A Vatican investigation in 2022 concluded that there were “no grounds to initiate a process against Cardinal Ouellet for sexual assault.” The cardinal denied wrongdoing and later that year filed a lawsuit of his own for defamation.
Neither cardinal has been charged with criminal offenses.
The two Canadians are among several cardinals accused of sexual abuse or misconduct in recent years.
The late Australian Cardinal George Pell, who served as Vatican finance chief under Francis, was accused of child sexual abuse in his native country and eventually acquitted on appeal. He died last year.
In 2019, Theodore McCarrick became the first cardinal in modern times to be dismissed from the priesthood, after a Vatican trial found him guilty of sexual abuse of minors and sexual misconduct with adults. Last year and earlier this month, courts in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, respectively, ruled McCarrick, 93 years old, incompetent to stand trial for sexual assault after a diagnosis of dementia. A lawyer for McCarrick, Barry Coburn, declined to comment Friday.
In 2022, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, a former archbishop of Bordeaux and former president of the French Bishops Conference, admitted that he had abused a 14-year-old girl in the 1980s.
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