Retired Vatican official accused of molesting altar boys in Ontario

Provincial police have issued a warrant for the arrest of a retired Vatican official who is accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy in eastern Ontario decades ago.

Monsignor Bernard Prince, 71, was close to Pope John Paul II. A Canadian, he travelled the world to promote Catholicism as secretary general of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

Prince is now retired and living in Rome.

A man in his 50s is accusing Prince of sexually assaulting him in the late 1960s, when he was an altar boy at a church in the Upper Ottawa Valley.

The man came forward with his accusations months ago. Ontario Provincial Police detectives are speaking with other men who attended the same church as boys or spent time at a cottage owned by Prince.

Prince has reportedly been told informally about the allegations, but says police have yet to contact him in Rome.