BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Buenos Aires Times
May 4, 2019
Local group Church Without Abuses (“Iglesia sin Abusos”) and the global organisations Ending Clergy Abuse and BishopAccountability.org joined forces in Buenos Aires on Thursday to urge Francis to return to his homeland of Argentina – which he hasn’t visited since becoming pope in 2013 – to ensure the Catholic Church punishes these crimes and does not protect perpetrators.
“If the Pope cannot end abuses and cover-ups in Argentina, he will not be able to do it anywhere else. This is where he has more power, influence, it is symbolically the most important country in the fight against abuse in the world,” Peter Isely, the co-founder of Ending Clergy Abuse and abuse victim, told The Associated Press news agency.
Isley and representatives of other activist groups gathered near the Monsignor Mariano Espinosa Home for Priests (El Hogar Sacerdotal Monseñor Mariano Espinosa) in Caballito, displaying signs calling for zero tolerance for sex abuses. A local priest accused of committing abuse had previously been housed there.
Pope Francis is on record as describing abuse as a “monstrosity” and previously vowed to tackle the problem “with the utmost seriousness.” Isley said he was not doing enough.
“In February, the Pope declared a war against abuses to be open, calling the abusive priests ‘bloodthirsty wolves.’ But what is happening in his own country?” Isley added, saying the pontiff “has not been on the side of the victims.”
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the online resource Bishopaccountability.org, said that while in other countries thousands of cases of abuse have been detected, in Argentina almost no criminal investigations or litigation have been seen. There is no official registry collating judicial complaints about abuses committed by members of the clergy in Argentina.
“In his 14 years as archbishop of Buenos Aires he only sent two allegations to the Vatican regarding sexual abuse in his diocese,” said Barrett Doyle.
“We ask the Church to stop covering up [the crimes], and to turn them [the perpetrators] over to justice,” said the co-founder of Church Without Abuses, Julieta Añasco, 47, who abused in her childhood by a priest.
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