Rosica faces charges of sexual assault

There is a decades-old allegation of sexual assault between the accused priest and a bishop who is currently being investigated by the Vatican for allegedly not taking the complaint seriously.

A lawsuit filed in March accuses Father Thomas Rosica, the national director of the 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, of sexually harassing a young priest in the run-up to the event. London Bishop Ronald Fabbro is under scrutiny for failing to act when he learned of the allegations in 2015 and not passing them on to his order, the Congregation of Saint Basil (Basilians), according to online news outlet The Pillar. Both men are members of the Basilians.

This resulted in Rosica being stripped of her priestly credentials. A credential is an authorization from an ecclesiastical authority that enables a priest to teach, sanctify, or govern for the good of the Church. It is withdrawn until the case is resolved.

“It's in the hands of the legal profession and I can't comment,” Rosica told OSV News on August 30 when asked about the case. Rosica's attorney, J. David Murphy, also declined to comment to OSV News.

The lawsuit, in which the plaintiff is requesting a jury trial, seeks at least $3.7 million in damages, plus court costs.

The plaintiff, a now 55-year-old priest who is referred to in the lawsuit as “MB,” also accuses Rosica's order, the Basilians of Toronto, of being “vicariously responsible and liable for Rosica's actions.”

The allegations still have to be proven in court.

According to The Pillar, which broke the news on August 28, the lawsuit alleges that Rosica developed a mentoring relationship with the plaintiff in the 1990s, who was then a newly ordained priest. The priest was a graduate student at the time, The Pillar reports. The priest was also invited to assist Rosica in preparations for World Youth Day, which attracted thousands of young Catholics to Toronto in the summer of 2002.

Rosica is said to have developed a close relationship with the young priest, one of “authority and trust,” the lawsuit says. This “allowed Rosica the opportunity to be alone with the plaintiff and to exercise control over him, stalking him and sexually abusing him.”

Rosica has denied any wrongdoing and asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit so the allegations can be heard in a canonical court. He argued that the Ontario court does not have jurisdiction in the dispute and that he and the plaintiff are ordained priests and the alleged assaults occurred while “discharging duties on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church” mean the case should be heard in an ecclesiastical court.

In a separate statement of defence, the Basilians of Toronto reiterated this argument, stating that “plaintiff's relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, including the Basilians, as an ordained priest is governed by canon law and is purely ecclesiastical in nature.”

The Basilians also countered that “the plaintiff has neither resorted to nor exhausted the canonical procedures with regard to the claims asserted.”

Both Rosica and the Basilian Fathers invoked the legal doctrine of negligence in their defense, claiming that the plaintiff had waited an unreasonable amount of time to make his allegations.

However, the plaintiff stated in his statement of claim that he had only recently been able to cope with these effects because he was “unable to continue due to the mental and psychological effects of the abuse, including severe addictions.”

The complaint was filed through the Canadian bishops' system for reporting sexual abuse or cover-ups, The Pillar reported, adding that the complaint has been forwarded to the Archdiocese of Toronto and is being reviewed by the Vatican's Dicastery for Bishops.

The Archdiocese of Toronto says it is aware of the allegations against Rosica, but noted that such matters involving a priest of a religious order fall within the purview of the order, in this case the Basilians, and that the archdiocese would not obstruct that process. The Diocese of London did not respond to a request for comment. The Catholic Register.

Originally from Rochester, New York, Rosica has held a number of high-level positions with the Catholic Church and its institutions. His career took off after World Youth Day in 2002. In 2003, he founded and directed Salt+Light Television and in 2009 was appointed a consultant to the then Pontifical Council for Social Communications. In 2013, he was appointed Vatican spokesman in the run-up to the conclave to elect Pope Francis and served as media consultant to two Synods of Bishops in 2008 and 2018. Rosica was also the English-speaking liaison at the Vatican Summit on Clerical Sexual Abuse in February 2019 and the English-speaking media attaché to the Holy See Press Office.

Rosica ran into trouble in 2019 when he resigned from his job at Salt+Light after repeated allegations of plagiarism in his published works.

Fabbro has been Bishop of London since 2002 and was Superior General of the Basilians for the five years prior to that. Fabbro spent years helping to draft the Canadian bishops' abuse policy, which was adopted in September 2018. In recent years he has also been at the forefront of efforts to combat abuse in the diocese after abuse allegations and cover-ups stretched back to the 1950s. In late 2019, the diocese confirmed that a list of priests credibly accused of abusing minors published by SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests) SW Ontario was “substantially accurate.”

Fabbro met many survivors and their families and promised to support them on their journey.

(With files from OSV)