Dublin, Ireland ? A Roman Catholic priest was convicted Wednesday of raping a 13-year-old girl.

During the six-day trial, the victim, whose identity was not made public, testified that the Rev. Daniel Doherty raped her in a church sacristy twice in 1985. Doherty, 48, had denied ever meeting the girl. He is expected to be sentenced in October.

Sex abuse scandals have jolted Ireland’s Catholic Church, where nearly 90 percent of the country’s 4 million residents identify themselves as Catholic. The church’s moral standing, Mass attendance and applications for priesthood have plummeted in Ireland since 1994, when the first major scandal involving a pedophile priest triggered the collapse of the government of then-Prime Minister Albert Reynolds.

Both church and state have since struggled to come to terms with the scale of abuse committed by priests. All but one seminary have closed.