AP: Catholic Church PEDOPHILIA SCANDAL Grows in Latin America
Julie (English only!)
By TALES AZZONI
The Associated Press
April 20, 2010
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 has added to the scandals
hitting the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America.
The allegations against Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa — and two other
Brazilian priests — have made headlines throughout the world's most
populous Catholic nation and come amid accusations of sexual abuse by
priests across the world.
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.
Barbosa's lawyer, Edson Maia, plans to seek his release from
detention, citing the man's advanced age and arguing that he has a
fixed address and does not pose a flight risk, Brazil's O Estado de S.
Paulo newspaper reported Tuesday.
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.
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, acknowledged 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.
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.
Associated Press Writer Alan Clendenning in Sao Paulo contributed to
this report.