A memorial honoring victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Portugal will not be presented at World Youth Day (WYD), contrary to what was announced, as “it is still being studied,” a source from the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP) said.
The announcement of the creation of the monument to be presented at WYD was made on March 3, at the end of an extraordinary plenary assembly of the CEP, which analyzed the results of a study of sexual abuse in the church in Portugal, carried out by an Independent Commission led by child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht.
On this occasion, CEP President José Ornelas assured that the issue of abuse will be highlighted during WYD with a memorial in the space of reconciliation. [Parque do Perdão]considered “correct” for this purpose.
The Bishop of Leiria-Fatima then confirmed that the idea of the Independent Commission for the construction of the memorial was “fully accepted”, since the authorship of the architect Siza Vieira.
According to the final communiqué of the CEP plenary assembly, after the WYD, the memorial will be “commemorated in the outer space of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference”.
Asked by Lusa on Monday about the process of building the memorial, a CEP source said the project is “still under study and therefore will not be presented during WYD”, adding that “once it is completed and there is a new date,” note will be issued.
“Any other appeals for victims of abuse during WYD week will be announced in due course,” the same source added.
The creation of the memorial and its presentation during the WYD, which will be held in Lisbon from August 1 to 6, were not agreed from the very beginning.
The president of the Lisbon World Youth Day 2023 Foundation, Bishop Américo Aguiar, who will be elevated to cardinal by Pope Francis on September 30, said in a joint interview with Público and Rádio Renascença on March 14 that the memorial is “not the happiest”. way” to call the victims, admitting that this idea caused him some “discomfort”.
“I don’t know if this is the best way to materialize respect, ‘my guilt’ and ‘zero tolerance’. [pedida pelo Papa Francisco para os casos de abuso]. I don’t know if it’s the happiest way to do it, especially when, with such things, a day passes, a pilgrimage passes, and after a while one no longer knows what it is. I don’t know if this is the most positive expression of what we can and should do,” said the chief person in charge of organizing WYD Lisbon 2023 at the time.
In February of this year, the Independent Commission for the Study of Child Sexual Abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church announced the verification of 512 testimonies of alleged abuse in Portugal, extrapolating to at least 4,815 victims.
Twenty-five cases were sent to the State Department, which opened 15 investigations, nine of which were closed. The testimonies refer to cases that took place between 1950 and 2022, the time period covered by the commission’s work.
In the report, this commission warned that the data collected in church archives on cases of sexual abuse “should be understood as the ‘tip of the iceberg'” of the phenomenon.
Following these results, some dioceses cautiously removed priests from their ministry.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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