(CANADA)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
September 9, 2025
By Michelle La Rosa
Canadian religious order says assault case should be considered by canonical tribunal
The Congregation of St. Basil has appealed a Canadian judge’s August 7 decision to allow a lawsuit to proceed against the congregation and its prominent member Fr. Thomas Rosica.
The lawsuit, filed in Ontario in March 2024, alleges that Rosica sexually assaulted a young priest who was helping him with preparation for the 2002 World Youth Day celebrations.
The lawsuit also charges that Rosica’s religious order, the Congregation of St. Basil, failed to properly supervise Rosica, and ignored complaints about his inappropriate interactions with young men.
Rosica, who denies the allegations, had asked the Canadian court to toss the lawsuit, because the case should be addressed exclusively in a canonical court.
Attorneys for Rosica and the Basilian Fathers argued that “the Court has no jurisdiction over the subject matter of this dispute as the Plaintiff and Fr. Rosica are ordained priests and the alleged assaults occurred while they were engaged in duties on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. Any such complaints or allegations would be governed by Canon Law. The court should defer to the ecclesiastical court and its application of Canon Law.”
However, Judge Evelyn M. ten Cate of the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario rejected the petition to dismiss the case.
“In my view, the Plaintiff’s claim is not essentially doctrinal or ecclesiastical in nature – it is of interest to all Canadians and goes well beyond the internal matters of the Roman Catholic Church,” she said in a decision last month.
“Moreover, the canonical court does not have an adequate internal dispute mechanism meant to cover claims for damages arising from sexual assault cases,” she continued. “Specifically, it has no ability to award punitive or aggravated damages, cannot make a finding of vicarious liability, and has no enforcement mechanism.”
In her decision, ten Cate cited a section of an article by Canadian law professor M.H. Ogilvie, published in Queens Law Journal in 2014.
The section reads: “Today in Canada, at a time when religious pluralism is increasing rapidly, it is important for the courts to assert jurisdiction under the Constitution and then to consider whether they wish to exercise that jurisdiction on the facts of a particular case or to permit, on a case-by-case basis, religious institutions to operate within an autonomous sphere parallel to that of the civil courts – a sphere within which religious law such as Roman Catholic canon law or Islamic sharia law would operate. The decision to relinquish jurisdiction entirely, however, should only be made by the legislature because such a decision would represent an abandonment of sovereignty as long understood in the common law.”
The citation formed a critical part of the Basilians’ Sept. 8 appeal.
The Basilians objected that the judge had relied on an article presenting a university professor’s opinion, which “is not a legal precedent.”
“Her Honour dd [sic] not provide the parties an opportunity to respond or make submissions in relation to the article,” the appeal said.
The Basilians’ appeal also objected that ten Cate had relied in her decision on her own independent research, rather than arguments presented in court, without informing the parties that she intended to do so, or giving the parties a chance to respond.
“Her Honour erred in addressing in the decision issues of whether parliament ‘intended to grant religious autonomy, outside of the Canadian legal system’ and whether religious organizations were exempt from the ‘authority of Canadian law,’ when these issues were not raised and are not relevant to the motion,” it added.
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Rosica was a Vatican advisor and a fixture in Catholic media and television for nearly two decades, before his prominence was stalled by 2019 reports of widespread plagiarism.
The priest was also a high-profile participant in the Vatican’s 2019 global abuse summit, convened by Pope Francis, where he urged that the problem of clerical sexual abuse not be “ignored.”
The March 2024 lawsuit alleges that Rosica developed a mentoring relationship with a newly ordained Canadian priest in the late 1990s, and also invited the young priest to assist in preparations for the 2002 World Youth Day, for which Rosica had been appointed chief executive officer.
The lawsuit was filed under a pseudonym, as is permitted in such suits by Canadian law, but the plaintiff later confirmed his identity as Fr. Michael Bechard of the Diocese of London, Ontario.
Bechard says Rosica developed a “close personal relationship” of “authority and trust” with him, creating opportunities to be alone with him.
The suit alleges that Rosica “made unwanted physical contact” with Bechard. It says Rosica exposed himself to the young priest, and repeatedly “groped and fondled” the young priest’s genitalia.
“Rosica facilitated the abuse under the guise of his role as teacher, priest, and guidance counselor, and further with a view of implicitly or explicitly helping the Plaintiff’s career within the Church in return for Rosica’s sexual advances,” the suit charges.
The older priest “used his position of authority and trust, as well as the dependency relationship that he had fostered with the Plaintiff, to ensure that the Plaintiff did not tell anyone about the behaviors they had engaged in,” the lawsuit adds.
In March 2024, the order removed Rosica’s faculties for priestly ministry, according to documents reviewed by The Pillar.
Despite that, Rosica continued to be listed as the facilitator of a several different events at a Jesuit-owned retreat later in 2024 and into 2025.
In a response to the lawsuit, Rosica denied “that he had a close personal relationship with the Plaintiff in any capacity, and denies he had any control or influence over him, or that he preyed upon him or sexually abused him.”
Instead, Rosica’s response claimed that he had “infrequent ministerial contact with the Plaintiff between 1996 and 2002, but denies sexually abusing or sexually assaulting or making unwanted physical contact or engaging in any improper conduct with the Plaintiff.”
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Rosica was ordained a priest in 1986, and rose to prominence when he was the principal organizer of Toronto’s World Youth Day in 2002.
In 2003, Rosica helped launch Salt+Light Television, a Toronto-based Catholic television network. The priest was appointed in 2009 a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communication, and in 2013 a Vatican spokesman ahead of the conclave which elected Pope Francis, and was a media advisor during 2008 and 2018 Synods of Bishops at the Vatican.
Rosica was also a participant in the Vatican’s February 2019 global summit on clerical sexual abuse, which was convened by Pope Francis in the wake of the 2018 Theodore McCarrick scandal.
“We’ve watched one country after another face [clerical abuse scandals],” Rosica told reporters at the start of that summit. “And more countries to come. This is now at the highest level of the Church. This is at the universal level. Nobody can ignore this right now.”
In 2019, Rosica resigned his leadership position at Salt+Light, and several university board positions, amid widespread indications that he had serially committed plagiarism in his published works.
Rosica said that he had been neither “prudent nor vigilant with several of the texts that have surfaced,” and said that the apparent plagiarism had been a “lack of oversight.”
“If there was an error on my part, it is that I have often relied on others who have generously helped me in my preparation of various texts and I did not do the necessary checking into sources, etc. I regret that. It was never willfully done,” Rosica said in a February 2019 statement.