CANADA
Global News
ALLISON LAMPERT, Montreal Gazette : Sunday, March 10, 2013
MONTREAL — On a chilly winter day in 2010, France Bédard led a picket demanding Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s resignation for not seriously addressing victims’ claims of abuse by Quebec clerics.
Today, she’d like to see him elected pope.
As founder of the Quebec Association of Victims of Priests, Bédard is to announce on Sunday the group’s support for Cardinal Ouellet becoming pontiff, during a protest against abuses by the Catholic Church held outside the Clercs de Saint-Viateur offices in Outremont.
Contrary to other groups that have “blacklisted” hometown born Ouellet, 68, the association believes his election as the first Canadian pontiff would thrust the stories of abuse recounted by its 3,500 members into the international spotlight, with reporters already descending on the Cardinal’s tiny hometown of La Motte.
“We are not being facetious, we are all for his election as pope,” Carlo Tarini, the association’s spokesperson told The Gazette. “What we hope they (journalists) will note is the No. 1 problem with the Catholic Church, which is the problem of pedophile priests. We want them to hear our claim that Quebec is a paradise for pedophile priests and how we knocked at (Ouellet’s) door in the past.
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