sunnewsnetwork.ca
4:45 pm, July 11th, 2013
Welland Courthouse
Credits: QMI AGENCY
ALISON LANGLEY | QMI AGENCY
NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. — A catholic priest and former high school principal has been convicted of possession of child pornography.Rheal LeBlanc, 77, was arrested in December and charged with one count of possession of child porn after a month-long investigation that included a search of his Welland, Ont., home.
LeBlanc pleaded guilty to the charge earlier this month, Det. Staff Sgt. Randy Bleich said.
LeBlanc was sentenced to 14 days in jail, to be served on weekends.
He was ordained in 1963 and was the first principal at Saint Paul High School when it opened its doors in 1982. He remained at the school until he retired in 1994.
The school’s gymnasium was named Fr. LeBlanc Hall in his honour.
He was also principal at Notre Dame College School from 1972 to 1982.
When a $4.4-million expansion was completed at Notre Dame in 2004, the school’s new cafeteria was renamed LeBlanc Hall in honour of the former principal.
Does anyone know how this ‘sweet deal’ transpired?
14 days in jail – to be served in weekends no less!!!
I am sick!
And Jesus said: “Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone”.
And PJ says, “FWMN, you are an idiot if you are trying to put Sylvia down”. Merely quoting the bible like you did leaving the ambiguity you did is a cowardly act. Just as cowardly as all the pervert collars hiding behind the skirt of popesy and defense lawyers.
When it come to pedophilia, please, pass me the rock, tis not a simple sin but a crime against diffensles child! Really, the story went like this; they caught a young girl with a maried man, behind a bush and wanted to stone her to death! Then Jesus said he who does not sleep with other women, cast the first stone, and nobody did! Not many stone would be cast even today…….I figure.
“And Jesus wept.”
Unbelievable, where is the truth?
fwmn,
Jesus telling people that it’s not their business what two consenting adults have done is one thing. The Bible does not, however, recommend ignoring evil, especially towards little children–quite the opposite.
Well said Sylvia..”sweet deal” indeed. A Catholic priest, an educator, a leader in the school system and a “roll” model for students,I’m disgusted..People of the area that these schools service, tear down his name in these places of honour, you don’t need this guy,s name on your institutions..your children don’t need to have his presence around them!
#fwnm…unbelievable!
The Attorney General cannot think child porn is that important if this person only gets 14 days jail time. Are the people of Ontario running the Justice System or
are the lawyers and the accused? What does this say to victims?
I went to Notre Dame from 1983-1987. Welland was one sick place – there was surveillance in the Seaway Mall in 1984, where community leaders were using the bathrooms for sex (I don’t know the details, but I believe minors were involved); a police officer responsible for teaching kids in schools how to be safe (and my softball coach in grade 3) was also implicated in inappropriate behaviour towards kids; Father Foley (teacher at Notre Dame) and Mayor Stranges stole money from seniors’ bingo, and Father Foley used proceeds for homosexual love nest in Buffalo (note – I don’t care about the homosexuality – it’s the hypocrisy); Father Grecco abused boys, including a friend of mine, while serving as priest at St. Kevin’s, my parish church not a kilometer from Notre Dame, also during the mid-80s. For some reason, I dodged all these bullets, but many innocents in the area didn’t. I blame the perpetrators and Catholicism, which clearly encourages immoral acts through the ever-available “get out of sin free card”, called Confession. Try to convince me that these priests weren’t confessing their sins to each other, and possibly getting ideas, or at least seeing that their crimes were ‘normal’. In any event, if god forgives you after a couple of hail marys, what’s to stop you from doing it again? The justice system seems to continue the tradition of minor penance. I’ll never leave my son alone in the company of a ‘man of god’, and he will know that they have no special claim to understand and practice morality. If anything, the record of the church and its leaders (bravely and preciously documented on this site) belies the idea that religion has anything to teach us about morality at all.
Maybe the sentence was lenient because he, a life long priest is standing by his religous vows to protect the real culprit. Anypriest worth his collar would take those vows to the grave. That is what is called honour.
Also known as “omerta”…
jg
I don’t see any “honour” at all in protecting perverts who will destroy more innocent lives, dvr. And since LeBlanc himself was convicted of possessing child porn, I don’t see any evidence that there was some other anonymous criminal being protected–that seems the ultimate in denial and wishful thinking.
This all makes me cringe. Leblanc was always an idiot, but what is with priests and kids? Let’s just follow the Anglicans, open the priesthood to married men and women and be done with all of this garbage. Ask grown men to abstain from sex – gay or straight – for a lifetime because Jesus died at 33 BEFORE marrying and somewhere along the way it became “law”. End it now and fix all of these problems in one generation