Awareness rising over scale of abuse in Latin America

By Marie Malzac
LaCroix International
February 18, 2019

https://bit.ly/2tq3fWF

Rancagua Cathedral in Chile. Photo by Claudio Reyes

This is the fourth in a five-part series on steps taken by Catholic bishops on the various continents.

Latin America has experienced a series of striking abuses cases in recent decades.

In Mexico, the charismatic founder of the Legion of Christ, Marcial Maciel (1920-2008), led a double life for more than 60 years.

With close ties to the Vatican, Maciel, a serious cocaine user, committed multiple instances of abuse on young seminarians, had children with several women and presided over a fortune valued at several million US dollars.

In Chile, as parish priest of a trendy neighborhood in Santiago, Fernando Karadima used his authority over the young men who frequented his group to abuse them sexually during the period 1980-2000.

In many respects, these two examples have become emblematic of the situation prevailing in the whole of Latin America.

Church authorities were alerted to no avail at a very early stage in each case.

It took until 2006 for Maciel and 2010 for Karadima, both of whom had highly placed connections in the Catholic hierarchy, to be forced to withdraw from public life following a series of accusations that became too serious to ignore.

Thanks to the protection of several nuncios (Vatican ambassadors) in Latin America and the silence of bishops for more than half a century, many cases of abuses continued to be perpetrated by priests – both well-known and not – across the whole region.

As nuncio to Chile during the 1980s, Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano strongly supported Karadima. Upon his return to Rome where he became Holy See Secretary of State – the second top post in the Vatican – Sodano became a powerful backer of Maciel.

Eventually, towards the end of the 2000s, awareness of the abuse issue began to rise. Major scandals involving leading figures of the Latin American Church, which resonated with similar affairs in the USA, Australia and Ireland, and new guidelines from the Vatican allowed the bishops to make progress in preventing sexual abuse.

"You can't hide the sun with a single finger," Bishop Luis Manuel Ali Herrera, an auxiliary in Bogota, Colombia, and the only Latin American member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, told La Croix.

According to sources cited by the Catholic news website, Crux, 40 percent of the cases currently under investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are from Latin America.

In response to Vatican insistence, most bishops conferences in the region, which has been seriously impacted by a flood of abuse cases concerning children and vulnerable adults, have recently adopted guidelines for fighting abuse within the Church.

Nevertheless, most of these are yet to be validated.

"The prevention protocols issue remains very fragile," said Bishop Ali Herrera, noting that the guidelines still need to be strengthened.

However, matters are progressing. Several countries have established national level commissions. Some have taken several additional steps in developing prevention systems.

In Mexico, for example, commissions exist in different regions of the nation. Meanwhile, the Pontifical University of Mexico has established an interdisciplinary research and training center for the protection of minors.

In addition, more than 150 priests accused of pedophile acts have been suspended in Mexico over the past nine years, according to information published by the Episcopal Conference of Mexico.

However, the first conviction of a priest for abuse did not take place until March 2018.

In these highly Catholic nations, criminal convictions against priests are extremely rare in the civil justice system. The first instance only occurred quite recently.

In Brazil, for example, the first priest was convicted in 2010 in a case that went almost unnoticed. However, the second case in December 2018 had a major impact on public opinion.

Going beyond these "landmark" cases of sexual abuse, it is now necessary to promote "increasing awareness" on the issue in cities and villages "where the Church is working," Bishop Ali Herrera said.

"What worries me is that many priests and bishops still have a 'siege mentality'," he said. "As a result, some initiatives have been defensive instead of looking at the issue as a pathway towards church renewal."

White Father Serge Traoré, a member of the Society of African Missions and the director of the Cardinal Lavigerie Center at the Catholic University of Salvador in Bahia, Brazil currently heads a prevention project there.

The project aims to compile "resources" for training to be provided in communities, institutes, parishes and member associations of the "Princess Tamar" network.

To achieve this, Father Traoré and his team are therefore also preparing a detailed report on the issue of sexual abuse in Brazil, the world's largest Catholic nation.

"The Brazilian bishops want to avoid an American-style scandal but they can no longer deny that accusations exist," said Father Traoré, referring several scandals of which he learned during the Year of Mercy when people were invited to review their lives, including the wounds they had suffered.

As in other regions of the world, the scourge of child sexual abuse is endemic in Brazil. According to several NGO and government sources, ten to thirteen young people and children are abused each hour around the country.