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McGrory had pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were laid in connection with two historic sex abuse complaints dating to the late 1960s.

A third complainant died before the case could reach trial.

All three complainants came forward to Ottawa police in 2016 after the Citizen published a story in which McGrory admitted to sexually abusing three young parishioners at Holy Cross Parish in the 1970s and 80s.

McGrory is to be sentenced in late August.

Court heard that McGrory, then pastor at St. Philip Parish in Richmond, met one of the complainants, an indigenous youth identified as J.B., at a touch football game in 1968.

Then 15, J.B. said he initially liked McGrory because he was impressed that a priest would play football with them.

McGrory gave the boys beer and invited them back to St. Philip Parish under the pretext that he needed help with some yard work. He rewarded them with more beer, and then told the boys he was too drunk to drive them back to Ottawa, J.B. said.

J.B. testified that he passed out, drunk, in a bedroom at the rectory and woke up with McGrory in his bed, fondling him. He later performed oral sex.

He didn’t cry out for help, the complainant said, because he was afraid of what others might say. “What if they came? What if they knew?” he testified.

J.B. told court that McGrory formed a trusting relationship with his guardians, who gave him a key to their house. He used it, J.B. said, to let himself into the house at night and molest him in his second-floor bedroom.