The Regroupement des archivistes religions (RAR) does not know whether archives of dioceses and religious communities in Quebec were destroyed or moved to prevent them from being seized by the police, during investigations into the sexual assault scandal in the Catholic Church.
In a statement sent to the media on Thursday, Caroline Brunet, president of the board of directors of the RAR, affirms that the Regroupement “acknowledges having transmitted to its members the text of Father Francis Morrisey in the early 1990s”.
In this letter dated 1991, of which Duty obtained a copy on Friday, Father Morrisey recommends that religious archivists “destroy” or “place elsewhere” documents that could prove compromising if seized by the police.
“It is not possible to know to what extent dioceses and religious communities have applied these recommendations,” specifies Ms. Brunet.
Mr. Morrisey’s letter, as well as a RAR information bulletin published in 2000 which includes the Oblate father’s recommendations, were filed Friday in the Superior Court of Quebec as part of the class action targeting the Brothers of the Christian instruction.
“Since we are not obliged to keep everything, it would be good, before a civil cause arises, to go through the archives and destroy any document that could be harmful later,” the Oblate father suggests to the archivists. , who was dean of the Faculty of Canon Law at Saint Paul University in Ottawa from 1972 to 1984.
In a correspondence intended for Robert Hémond, president at the time of the RAR, Father Morrisey added that this instruction should not be made public “because if lawyers for the “victims” ever learn that we have certain files elsewhere, they will be tempted to seek them also by means of a subpoena.”
More details will follow.