New Testimony Surfaces in Sexual Abuse Case of Chilean Priest
By Maria Giulia Agostini
This weekend, Chile celebrated the "Día de la Virgen del Carmen," one of the most important holidays of the Roman Catholic calendar, with masses and special services throughout the country. This year's celebration, however, was marred with another stain on the reputation of the Catholic Church when a man uploaded a YouTube video describing his sexual abuse at the hands of respected Chilean priest Cristián Precht. The alleged victim, Jorge Cantellano, said he was abused by Precht in 1979, when Cantellano was a 19-year-old student in a church seminary. "He invited me to sleep in his room, which I found strange because priests had rooms for visitors," Cantellano says in the video. "We talked about the vocation and a few other things. Once we were done, he took my hand, affectionately placed it on his chest and then lowered it toward his penis." Celebrated in the country for his humanitarian contribution during the Pinochet dictatorship, the public was shocked when Precht was linked to sexual abuse for the first time 11 months ago. Since then, 20 more witnesses have come forward, including some minors, and the priest has temporarily been suspended. At request of Santiago Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati, Precht will be judged by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of its major administrative organizations. Precht's case is not the first one to upset the Catholic community in the country. The series of scandals affecting the Catholic Church began in the early 2000s, with the story of Father José Andrés Aguirre. Condemned for 11 violations on children, committed between 1988 and 2002, the priest was sentenced in 2003 to 12 years in jail and was prohibited from priesthood for life. Although he never actually went to prison but instead spent the years in a monastery in Germany, the sentence was the first official recognition by both state and church of the wrongdoings committed within the Catholic Church. Last January saw the milder conviction of Father Fernando Karadima, who the Vatican found guilty of abuses and then prohibited permanently from exercising any act related to the Catholic Church or having contact with former parishioners or colleagues, though he was not excommunicated. Karadima's legal case was dismissed as being "outside the statute of limitations." "There is no place for priesthood for those who abuse minors," said Archbishop Ezzati at the time. Those who have denounced Precht are waiting to see these words ring true in his case. As Castellano says in his video, "It will be necessary for the community and the laws to intervene in this process of change." "I want (Precht) and all those like him to be able to recognize their faults," he adds. Ezzati, however, did not show much interest in the wake of the video's release. "I have not seen the video," he said. "And I am not going to see it." "It says nothing new, according to what they've told me," he added. "It has been said in writing and that is enough." Contact: agostini@santiagotimes.cl
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