Church pedophilia scandal grows in
Latin America
04.20.2010 11:00am EDT
(Sao Paulo) The detention
of an 83-year-old priest in Brazil for allegedly abusing boys as young as 12 in
a case involving lurid videotape and a congressional investigation is the
latest scandal to hit the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America.
The allegations against
Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa – and two other Brazilian priests – have made
huge headlines throughout this Catholic nation and come amid accusations of
sexual activity by priests across the region as well as in Europe and the U.S.
The scandal erupted when
Brazilian television network SBT last month broadcast a tape of Barbosa in bed
with a 19-year-old that was widely distributed on the Internet.
The station said the video
was secretly filmed in January 2009 and sent anonymously to the network. It was
not clear if the 19-year-old, identified as a former altar boy who had worked
with Barbosa for four years, had previous sexual relations with the priest.
SBT reporters went to
Barbosa’s house and confronted him. Asked if he ever abused boys, Barbosa said
he could only answer such a question “in confession” and cut off the interview.
Brazil’s legislature
launched a sex abuse investigation, which produced allegations Barbosa molested
boys. The elderly priest was detained late Sunday.
Judge Romulo Vasconcelos
told Globo TV on Monday that he requested Barbosa’s immediate detention out of
fear the priest would flee the country.
The case now goes to
prosecutors, who will decide whether to file child abuse charges.
Sen. Magno Malta, the
Brazilian lawmaker leading the legislature’s probe, called Barbosa’s detention
a milestone in the fight against child abuse in Brazil.
Congressional investigators
said more than 20 witnesses were called and some testified Barbosa and two
other priests in the same northeastern archdiocese had abused boys as young as
12, plying them with money, clothes and other gifts.
Bishop Valerio Breda of the
Penedo archdiocese in the northeastern state of Alagoas said recently that all
three priests had been suspended and that the church was conducting its own
investigation.
One of the accused priests,
Edison Duarte, was given immunity for cooperating with authorities, Malta said
in a statement issued by his senate office. The third priest – Raimundo Marques
– also is being investigated but denies any wrongdoing. He has not been
arrested.
Church officials have not
responded to calls requesting information on where Barbosa and the other
priests had worked in the past, and it was not immediately clear if Barbosa had
a lawyer.
Barbosa told investigators
that “he is not a pedophile,” but after three former altar boys testified he
had abused them, he asked for forgiveness, said Renato Paoliello, a spokesman
for Malta.
Latin Americans priests
have faced a cascade of accusations of abuse of minors recently.
Just this month, church
officials in Uruguay confirmed they had not revealed the whereabouts to police
of a defrocked priest who fled home to his family in Uruguay after a nun
accused him of raping three children in Bolivia. And a priest in Chile was
charged with eight cases of sexually abusing minors, including a girl he had
fathered.
A Mexican woman charged in
March that the deceased, scandal-tainted founder of a conservative Catholic
religious order abused one of the two sons she said he fathered with her. The
Legionaries of Christ, the order founded by the Rev. Marcial Maciel, had
acknowledged a little over a year earlier in a separate case that Maciel had
molested seminarians.
In a report last week, The
Associated Press detailed how its reporters around the globe had found 30 cases
of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad by the church
and some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in other
countries, and some abused again. The probe spanned 21 nations across six
continents.
Feeding the controversy,
Pope Benedict XVI’s second-in-command outraged many last week in Chile when he
said homosexuality and not celibacy was the primary reason for the abuse.
“Many psychologists and
psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and
pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that
there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,”
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told reporters April 12 at a news conference in
Santiago. “That is the problem.”
The comments by Bertone,
the Vatican’s secretary of state, were condemned by gay advocacy groups,
politicians and even the French government.
The scandals have been
closely followed in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other nation in
the world.
On Sunday, a teary-eyed
Pope Benedict XVI met with abuse victims in Malta and said the church will do
everything possible to protect children and bring abusive priests to justice,
the Vatican said.
The emotional moment carried
no new admissions from the Vatican, which has strongly rejected accusations
that efforts to cover up for abusive priests were directed by the church
hierarchy for decades. But the pontiff told the men that the church would
“implement effective measures” to protect children, the Vatican said, without
offering details.