A suspended New York priest was arrested yesterday on a Bay State warrant for rape and indecent assault on a child in Billerica more than 20 years ago.

The Rev. Romano Ferraro, 67, of Queens was arrested by New York police after an indictment Thursday by a Middlesex County grand jury for sex crimes between 1973 and 1980, beginning when the child was 7, District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Emily LaGrassa said.

Though the time period of the case moves it beyond the statute of limitations under Massachusetts law, LaGrassa said Ferraro's out-of-state residency makes the case prosecutable.

``That statute is essentially frozen from the time he's outside the jurisdiction,'' she said.

Attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., who helped expose the Rev. James R. Porter scandal in Fall River in 1992, hailed the Middlesex move.

``There is precedent from the Porter case that when a molester leaves the jurisdiction of the state, the statute freezes,'' he said.

``I would like to see this tactic used wherever possible. There are abusive Massachusetts priests who may well be prosecutable in New Hampshire because they took victims to that state.''

LaGrassa said Ferrara and the alleged victim were ``known to each other'' at the time of the abuse, which occurred in a Billerica home.

But officials did not say what their relationship was or what the Brooklyn Diocese priest was doing in the Bay State at the time.

The 1978 Official Catholic Directory lists Ferraro, who was ordained in 1960, in residence at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Brooklyn.

Diocese spokesman Frank De Rosa said Ferraro had been on suspension since the late 1980s after a separate allegation of sexual misconduct.

``He has not been functioning as a priest since that time,'' De Rosa said.

In the 1980s, Ferraro served at Holy Family Parish in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

In December 1986, he gained fleeting international infamy after telling schoolchildren at the St. Vianney Church Sunday school in Woodbridge, N.J., that St. Nicholas had died in the year 350, and that as a result Santa Claus was not real.

The remarks, made during a homily assailing the commercialism of Christmas, provoked a global flap, forcing him to take a leave of absence.

``I got 400 letters from around the world,'' he told the Newark Star-Ledger at the time.

``This was a hurtful time, and embarrassing time, a tearful time.''

In another alleged interstate child sex abuse case, authorities said Hyde Park's David Carney did not file criminal charges against Monsignor Frederick Ryan in Rhode Island as intended yesterday, though Carney's attorney said he is on the verge of doing so.

``We have taken the next appropriate steps (to filing),'' Daniel J. Shea said of the complaint against Ryan, whom Carney says took him across state lines to molest him two decades ago.

Jim Martin, a spokesman for Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, said the idea of freezing the statute of limitations for defendants who reside out of the jurisdiction where the crime was committed may not apply in his state, however.

``The clock does not necessarily stop,'' he said.

Robin Washington may be reached at rwashington@bostonherald.com