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  Spokesman Says Diocese Is Not Responsible for Defrocked Priest

WQAD
May 21, 2006

http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=4930625&nav=1sW7

BELLEVILLE, Ill. A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Belleville says a defrocked priest who has admitted to molesting children and lives in a religious order's retirement home is not the responsibility of the bishop of Belleville.

The diocesan vicar general, the Reverend Jack McEvilly, says that despite a priest sexual abuse policy of zero tolerance, religious orders are not bound by the agreement.

Apparently without the knowledge of then-Bishop Wilton Gregory, the Reverend Real Bourque (RAY'-al BORK), was transferred four years ago to the St. Henry Oblate Retirement Home in Belleville.

Bourque admitted in April to church officials that he sexually abused boys in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Massachusetts. Bourque has since said he will no longer comment.

 
 

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