CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in the sex scandal that rocked the Boston Archdiocese, was convicted yesterday of raping and fondling a boy at his Roman Catholic church during the 1980s.

The conviction on all four charges gives prosecutors a high-profile victory in their effort to bring pedophile priests to justice for decades of abuse at parishes around the country.

Shanley, 74, could get life in prison for two counts each of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child when he is sentenced February 15. His bail was revoked and he was immediately led off to jail.

The victim, now 27, put his head down and sobbed as the verdicts were announced after a trial that turned on the reliability of what he claimed were recovered memories of the long-ago abuse. Shanley showed no emotion as he stood next to his lawyer. The jury deliberated 13 hours over three days.

During the trial, the accuser broke down on the stand as he testified in graphic detail that Shanley pulled him out of Sunday morning catechism classes and raped and groped him in the church bathroom, the rectory, the confessional, and the pews starting when he was 6. “It felt awful,” he testified. “He told me nobody would ever believe me if I told anybody.”

The accuser said he repressed his memories of the abuse but that they came flooding back three years ago, triggered by news coverage of the scandal that began in Boston and soon engulfed the church worldwide.

Shanley, once a long-haired, jeans wearing “street priest” who worked with Boston’s troubled youth, sat stoically for most of the trial, listening to his accuser’s testimony with the help of a hearing aid.

The defense called just one witness – a psychologist who said that so-called recovered memories can be false, even if the accuser ardently believes they are true. A lawyer for Shanley argued that the accuser was either mistaken or concocted the story with the help of personal injury lawyers to cash in on a multimillion-dollar settlement resulting from the sex scandal.

The accuser, now a firefighter in suburban Boston, was one of at least 24 men who claimed they had been molested by Shanley. The archdiocese’s own personnel records showed that church officials knew Shanley publicly advocated sex between men and boys, yet continued to transfer him from parish to parish.

Prosecutors said the accuser had no financial motivation in accusing Shanley of rape in the criminal case because he received his $500,000 settlement with the archdiocese nearly a year ago. They also cited his three days on stand, during which he sobbed and begged the judge not to force him to continue testifying.

“The emotions were raw. They were real,” prosecutor Lynn Rooney said in closing arguments.

Rodney Ford, whose son Greg was one of three accusers dropped from the case, called the verdict “a relief for my son, and all the other victims.”

“The validation that all the victims of Paul Shanley must feel today must be unbelievable,” Mr. Ford said.

Shanley’s niece disagreed.

“There are no winners today. There are only losers,” Teresa Shanley said. “We’re no closer to finding out the truth about this scandal or finding out what happened.”

Frank Mondano, Shanley’s lawyer, said he will appeal. “It appears that the absence of a case is not an impediment to securing a conviction,” he said.

Shanley is one of the few priests prosecutors have been able to charge. Most of the priests accused of wrongdoing avoided prosecution because the statute of limitations on their alleged crimes ran out long ago. But the clock stopped when Shanley moved out of Massachusetts.

He was arrested in California at the height of the scandal in May 2002, and brought back to Massachusetts in handcuffs – charged with raping four boys from his parish in Newton, outside Boston. All four claimed they repressed memories of the abuse, then recovered them when the scandal broke.

But the case ran into numerous problems. In July, prosecutors dropped two of the accusers in what they said was a move to strengthen their case. Then, on the day jury selection began, they dropped a third accuser because they were unable to find him after a traumatic experience on the witness stand.

The clergy abuse scandal in Boston began in early 2002 when Cardinal Bernard Law acknowledged he shuffled a pedophile priest from parish to parish despite evidence the priest had molested children. That priest, John Geoghan, was convicted of assault and was later killed in prison.

The scandal intensified later in 2002 when the church released Shanley’s 800-page personnel file, in which he argued for acceptance of homosexuality and pushed for gay rights. He called himself a “sexual expert” and advertised his counseling services in the alternative press. He resigned from parish work in 1989 and moved to California.