The coordinator of the commission studying child sexual abuse in the church said on Tuesday that the agency’s response to the report was “very mixed” and defended removing the secrecy of confession “when there are issues that overlap.”
“The reaction developed, but very ambivalently, and after a certain point, I think it benefited from the influence of the group itself as a whole, because I also think that subsequently there were bishops who realized that if they did not participate, as others did, it would be difficult for them to assume it in front of the general public,” said Pedro Strecht.
Pedro Strecht spoke at the hearings before the Commission on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees of the Assembly of the Republic, at the request of Cheg, PS and PSD, on the final report of the commission, entitled “Voice to Silence”.
The facilitator emphasized that “in fact, the attitude was often evolutionary and ambivalent, as if the study itself, for some, was not the result of a request from the CEP itself. [Conferência Episcopal Portuguesa]”.
Asked if the church took the side of the victims, the child psychiatrist, who was accompanied by other members of the Portuguese Catholic Church’s Independent Commission for the Study of Child Sexual Abuse, also said he had “the biggest doubts about it.” .
“This study may, in fact, be the beginning of a turning of the page, in which, despite the huge resistance within the Church, everything will no longer be the same as before (…) and from a social point of view, we also have the tools to look at childhood in in general and on the problem of sexual violence in particular,” he added.
Pedro Strecht, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of revisiting the secrecy of confession, noting that “this is also provided for in other professional structures, including doctors themselves, when cross-cutting issues arise.”
Regarding the lifting of the secrecy of confession, retired Judge Laborinho Lucio, a former Minister of Justice, acknowledged the presence of “tremendous obstacles in terms of canon law and, from the very beginning, at this moment, through the Concordat itself.”
“We understand that yes in this aspect [dos abusos sexuais]but the question here is the question of an absolutely internal decision of the Church and the question of whether it is related to dogma or not,” said Laborinho Lucio.
The former ruler said that “It is strange, however, that the reason that imposes secrecy in the absolute terms in which it is imposed on confessions does not later collide with the fact that confession also in many cases serves to practice sexual violence.” in the very act of confession.
“But this is an issue that we need to work on from a more global point of view, involving the Church itself in such a decision,” he defended.
An independent commission for the study of child sexual abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church confirmed 512 of the 564 testimonies received, indicating, by extrapolation, that the minimum number of victims was about 4,815.
Twenty-five cases were reported to the prosecutor’s office, resulting in 15 investigations, nine of which have already been archived and six are still under investigation.
These testimonies refer to cases that took place between 1950 and 2022, the period covered by the commission’s work.
SR // FPA
Lusa/The End
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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