BishopAccountability.org
	Former Altar Boy Shocked at Charges against Ex-Priest By Eva Hoare The Chronicle-Herald January 26, 2011 http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1223986.html Joseph Bishara was still reeling Tuesday after learning that the priest he'd served as an altar boy now faces 40 charges of sexually abusing young boys in the 1970s. "That's not the Father Albert LeBlanc I knew," Bishara said a day after the RCMP charged the 81-year-old former Yarmouth priest turned probation officer with sexually abusing three boys. "It's unbelievable when it hits home like that." LeBlanc, who now lives in Bouctouche, N.B., faces 11 counts of indecent assault against one boy and 29 other charges of gross indecency against up to three boys. The alleged incidents happened in the Yarmouth area from 1970-85. LeBlanc will appear in Yarmouth court on March 15. Bishara, a resident of Yarmouth, was also one of several boys who accompanied the former priest on a hockey trip to Boston in the late 1960s to see the Bruins play at the Boston Gardens. Now a retired schoolteacher, Bishara never saw anything offside about LeBlanc's behaviour. "I was an altar boy for Father LeBlanc for years. He was fun, he was always with the guys and he did so much for the youth," said Bishara, adding there were adult chaperones on the trips. "Holy mackerel. What he's being charged with is not a world that I know about. In Boston, over there, it was all fun." Bishara went on to marry and have children of his own. He said he has to be open-minded about the allegations made against LeBlanc. "The Father LeBlanc that I knew doesn't fit this profile at all. (I) saw him every day at the youth centre, (we worked) at the rectory, at the church," he said. "(But) the way things are with my church, I'm not surprised at anything now. "I would never question people who are coming forward today because there was so much of it in the Catholic Church. I would not doubt anyone who says anything." After attending university, Bishara did see LeBlanc, who resigned from the priesthood in 1973 and became a parole officer, every once in a while. "When teaching, I had occasion to speak to him when he was a probation officer," he said. "It was all positive." An avid churchgoer, Bishara said everyone in his town is talking about the case. "You bet they are; it doesn't matter where you go. For me, my church is wounded, it's got a cancer and it's got to be healed. I'm not letting human beings' frailties let me stray from my church." But Bishara is upset about abuse-related coverups within the religious hierarchy. He remembers being warned about certain priests who came and went at his parish. " 'Say mass with him,' " he remembers one priest telling him about another priest when he was an altar boy. " 'But don't hang around with him.' "That's one thing that angers me more than anything is this ugly coverup(s). It's disgraceful."
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