MONTREAL (CANADA)
Yahoo! Canada [Toronto, Canada]
March 4, 2026
By Paul Cherry, Montreal Gazette
A Catholic priest’s ordination can be a joyous occasion with hugs and handshakes exchanged following the ceremony, said two witnesses who testified Wednesday at the Montreal courthouse where retired Cardinal Marc Ouellet is suing a woman for allegedly defaming him.
“We see everything,” Jérôme Frenette, 45, who has worked for the diocese in Quebec City for years, told Quebec Superior Court Justice Martin Castonguay.
Frenette was referring to how he has seen people greet priests after they are ordained. He said he has seen ceremonies where 150 people have attended and one, during February 2010, presided over by Ouellet, where between 400 and 500 people attended.
Frenette said he was “the first to arrive and the last one to leave” Notre-Dame-de-Québec Cathedral-Basilica while he worked that day co-ordinating the ceremony. He also said people were in a celebratory mood at the ordination and many touched the priest and the cardinal when they greeted them.
[PHOTO: Witness Jérôme Frenette waits outside the courtroom during a break at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday, March 4, 2026.]
The judge is hearing evidence in a case in which Ouellet is suing a woman named Paméla Groleau for $100,000. He alleges she defamed him when she alleged in a class-action suit filed against Catholic priests and in the media that he sexually assaulted her by touching her inappropriately.
She has alleged that he massaged her shoulders and ran his hand down her back to the top of her buttocks in 2008 and 2010.
Based on the questions asked of two witnesses Wednesday morning, it appears Groleau alleges one event involving touching occurred during the priest’s ordination in Quebec City. Groleau worked for the Quebec diocese at the time.
[PHOTO: Paméla Groleau is seen at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday, March 4, 2026.]
Frenette is responsible for security at a seminary in Quebec City and co-ordinated the logistics of many ceremonies at churches. He said he worked with Groleau a few times per year while preparing confirmation schedules.
He described Ouellet as someone who does not seek to touch people.
“He is someone who meditates, reflects. I would even say I found him to be distant and even sometimes cold, but I would see him in the context of his work, the liturgy,” Frenette said.
[PHOTO: Cardinal Marc Ouellet and a lawyer in his case are seen during a break at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (Credit: John Mahoney)]