CANADA
CBC News
March 4, 2019
By Jorge Barrera and Lynette Fortune
Former principal denied existence but experts say records of sensitive information about priests were kept
When OPP Det. Greg Delguidice was preparing to look into widespread allegations of physical and sexual abuse by priests, nuns and staff at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in northern Ontario, he did some homework first.
As part of the investigation 25 years ago, Delguidice studied up on the Roman Catholic Church’s canon law and learned of archives held by dioceses that contain records of sensitive information about priests.
“I know that the Catholic Church also keeps a secret archive, and matters of temporal affairs, as they’re so-called, are supposed to be kept secret and hidden away,” Delguidice said in an interview with The Fifth Estate’s Gillian Findlay.
“Any allegations that would have been made would have been, in my view, probably kept in secret archives somewhere.”
But when Delguidice confronted Bishop Emeritus Jules Leguerrier, who had been St. Anne’s principal from 1944 to 1975, about the “secret archives,” he got nowhere.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.