Pressure on Italian Catholic church to face child sexual abuse reckoning
Pressure is mounting on the Catholic church in Italy to face a reckoning on child sexual abuse amid unofficial estimates that the country could have the highest number of victims of paedophile priests in the world.
A group of religious and lay associations have now come together to push for an independent inquiry and to urge the Italian state to enact tougher laws to bring paedophile priests to justice and come up with a plan to protect children from sexual abuse by clergy.
“The problem in Italy is enormous but it has been hidden,” said Cristina Balestrini, who leads a group for abuse victims and their families. “For example, two of the priests who celebrated my marriage turned out to be paedophiles. Then there was the priest who raped my son. So that makes three paedophile priests, just in my small world.”
There are no official figures on the number of clerical abuse victims in Italy, but the main victims’ association, Rete L’Abuso, has recorded 360 cases of priests accused or convicted over the last 15 years. A treaty between the Italian government and the Vatican means the majority of child abuse investigations in Italy are carried out behind a wall of secrecy within the Holy See’s jurisdiction. If found guilty by a Vatican court, most priests end up being transferred to a new diocese rather than being defrocked or jailed. Of those found guilty by an Italian court, few are imprisoned.
“It’s obvious that Italy is the country where the scandal could be worse [than in France], because it’s one of the countries with the highest number of priests in the world,” said Zanardi, who says he was abused by a parish priest from the age of 11 to 15. “There are also many foreign priests accused of paedophilia who have been given shelter in Italy. We need an independent inquiry; if the church does an internal one, it won’t be credible.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/f...-reckoning
Pressure is mounting on the Catholic church in Italy to face a reckoning on child sexual abuse amid unofficial estimates that the country could have the highest number of victims of paedophile priests in the world.
A group of religious and lay associations have now come together to push for an independent inquiry and to urge the Italian state to enact tougher laws to bring paedophile priests to justice and come up with a plan to protect children from sexual abuse by clergy.
“The problem in Italy is enormous but it has been hidden,” said Cristina Balestrini, who leads a group for abuse victims and their families. “For example, two of the priests who celebrated my marriage turned out to be paedophiles. Then there was the priest who raped my son. So that makes three paedophile priests, just in my small world.”
There are no official figures on the number of clerical abuse victims in Italy, but the main victims’ association, Rete L’Abuso, has recorded 360 cases of priests accused or convicted over the last 15 years. A treaty between the Italian government and the Vatican means the majority of child abuse investigations in Italy are carried out behind a wall of secrecy within the Holy See’s jurisdiction. If found guilty by a Vatican court, most priests end up being transferred to a new diocese rather than being defrocked or jailed. Of those found guilty by an Italian court, few are imprisoned.
“It’s obvious that Italy is the country where the scandal could be worse [than in France], because it’s one of the countries with the highest number of priests in the world,” said Zanardi, who says he was abused by a parish priest from the age of 11 to 15. “There are also many foreign priests accused of paedophilia who have been given shelter in Italy. We need an independent inquiry; if the church does an internal one, it won’t be credible.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/f...-reckoning
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
