ITALY
Washington Post
By Anthony Faiola March 15
NAPLES, Italy — Diego was the shy one in Father Silverio Mura’s class; a 13-year-old, olive-skinned and handsome, who spent his free time indoors watching cartoons. He walked to school alone in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, stopping first to pray to a statue of the Virgin Mary in the rose garden in front of his apartment building.
“She was my protector,” he said.
But nothing and no one, Diego charged, protected him from Mura — the religion teacher who invited the then-teenage boy to the priest’s small apartment on Brothers Grimm Street after class one day in 1989. There, Diego, now 39, said Mura cajoled him into a kiss. A few days later, he was asked to return, suffering the first of what he described as hundreds of incidences of sexual abuse that turned a quiet boy who wanted to be a pilot into a deeply troubled adult.
After he finally came forward in 2009, Diego’s case languished. The local diocese even transferred Mura in 2012 to a school where the priest had regular access to children as young as 14. That’s when Diego, who is still Catholic, made what would become a decisive move — he wrote directly to Pope Francis.
His case is one of several in which Francis has personally intervened to aid alleged abuse victims in what the Vatican calls yet another push for change by a pope known for leading by example. The pope, according to the Vatican, escalated Diego’s case, prompting an official church investigation that could ultimately lead to Mura’s defrocking. Given the length of such legal processes in the church, it could take a year or more to establish his guilt or innocence. ….
Francis, like Benedict before him, victims’ groups say, has failed to act decisively against bishops charged with hiding abuse in their diocese, and he has embraced solutions they see as little more than window dressing. They cite alarming instances, for example, in which local dioceses have left abusive priests in ministry. The activist group BishopAccountability.org, for instance, recently drafted a letter to senior church officials profiling a number of accused clerics in the Philippines who, they say, still enjoy easy access to children. Symbolism alone, critics insist, will not get the job done.
“Getting involved in one or two cases is a PR strategy, not a solution,” said David Clohessy, president of the U.S. group SNAP (the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests).
Yet for those few affected by the pope’s involvement, it can feel like nothing short of a miracle.
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