The Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) announced Wednesday in Lyon (south-eastern France) that it was starting a procedure for the “dismissal” of one of its members, Father Joannes Rivoire, 92, accused sexual assaults on young Inuit in Canada in the 1960s.
“We have started a canonical dismissal procedure, because Father Rivoire stubbornly refuses to obey our order and to present himself to justice” in Canada, Father Gruber, provincial of the Oblates of France, announced to the press.
The announcement comes within the framework of the visit to France of a delegation of Inuits who came to support an extradition request filed in early August by Ottawa against the religious of French-Canadian nationality.
Father Gruber had reserved the first of this announcement to this delegation which he met on Wednesday afternoon.
The Inuits’ request met with the refusal of the French Ministry of Justice, which recalled on Tuesday that, in accordance with its constitutional tradition, “France does not extradite its nationals”.
Father Rivoire, who lives in a retirement home in Lyon, was targeted by a first arrest warrant between 1998 and 2017 for sexual assaults against three minors.
A new complaint was filed in September relating to a sexual assault that took place around 47 years ago and a new arrest warrant was issued in August.
On Wednesday, a double meeting was organized at the headquarters of the congregation in Lyon: first with the management of the OMI, then with Father Rivoire, who finally accepted the meeting after long negotiations.
At the end of the meeting, the Inuit representative Kilikvak Kabloona regretted that the person concerned had as before “completely denied all the allegations”.
“He refuses to go to Canada, citing skin problems,” she lamented. Asked about this, Father Gruber declined to comment, pointing out that he was “not a doctor”.
The delegation is notably composed of an alleged victim and two children of another alleged victim of the religious. The Inuit must speak at a press conference scheduled for Thursday morning in Lyon.
So far, the priest, who left Canada in 1993 after 33 years in the Canadian Far North, has never been worried.
On Tuesday, the Chancellery announced that “France stands ready to respond to any request for mutual legal assistance that Canada may formulate or, if necessary, to act within the framework of a denunciation of the facts that would be formulated to it, subject nevertheless to examining the possible prescription of the facts”.