An 81-year-old retired priest has been charged with rape in connection with the sexual assault of a preteen girl who was a parishioner at his western Manitoba church in the early 1970s.

Manitoba RCMP said a woman in her 60s reported the historic sexual assault in March 2022. 

She said she was sexually assaulted multiple times over two years by the priest while she was a parishioner at St. Elijah Romanian Orthodox Church in Lennard, Man., a small community just over 300 kilometres northwest of Win…