CANADA
Newsday
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
Associated Press Writer
February 3, 2006, 5:21 PM EST
TORONTO -- An arrest warrant has been issued for a retired Vatican official accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old altar boy when he was a parish priest back in his native Canada, police said Friday.
Monsignor Bernard Prince, 71, once the secretary general for the Vatican's Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith and close to the late Pope John Paul II, is now retired in Rome.
The alleged victim, now in his 50s, claimed he was molested when he was an altar boy at the church where Prince served in the Upper Ottawa Valley in the late 1960s before moving to Rome to serve the Vatican.
Sgt. Kristine Rae-Chollette of the Ontario Provincial Police said the initial arrest warrant for two charges of sexual assault was issued in October, but not made public until this week because other possible victims were still coming forward.