Concealment of abuses on the part of the Church in order to preserve “good customs” and “good name”.

The Independent Commission to Study Child Sexual Abuse in the Church partly attributes the supposed persistence of the “good morals” and “good name of the church” to the institution’s cover-up of crimes of abuse for decades.

Abandoning criticism of the church’s actions, the commission’s report, published on Monday, recalls that, according to the Concordat signed between Portugal and the Holy See, members of the clergy cannot be questioned by magistrates or other authorities “about the facts and things they have.” were aware because of their ministry” but cautions that this “does not invalidate another conclusion to be drawn when, moving away from the abstract, one looks at the concrete situation to be assessed.”

For a working group led by child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, “Given the trusting relationship that naturally underlies the connection of a child and his family with an institution such as the Catholic Church, this cannot but assume the position of a “guarantor” of legal benefits, which , although not consecrated by civil law, unequivocally follows from the foundations of canon law and can never be neglected by the members of the Church as a whole.

“Also for this reason, it is important to preserve that what is at stake is not only the legal duty to condemn, but, in addition to this and independently of it, also the ethical, moral and civic duty to condemn,” puts forward the commission’s document, recalling that “it is enough to think about situations in which the perpetrator was allowed to continue performing his functions, even if he was moved to a different place than where he committed the first known violence.

For the independent commission, “in situations like this one, the question is whether the institution itself, after having managed to avoid denunciation, is not, in the end, violating its duties of “vigilance” and, above all, of “protection”, precisely those that give the body to its aforementioned “guarantor” condition.

Recognizing that there are situations “hidden by the victims themselves or their immediate family; even others exposed by them or by them, but with a request for secrecy regarding state justice; including complaints requiring his intervention or saying nothing about it”, the report is peremptory in concluding that “over time, everything has been handled in such a way as to avoid public acquaintance with the cases, apparently in the name of preserving other “more important “goods, namely good customs and the good name of the Church itself.”

With the revision of the criminal law, which in 2007 began to give publicity to sexual crimes against minors, “it becomes more difficult to allow such an omission” in the condemnation of crimes by the Church, the working group believes, adding that “from the moment when the crime becomes public character, lack of connection with the prosecutor’s office turns silence into a true cover-up.

“What would the Church do if, instead of a sexual crime committed against children, it faced the crime of murder?” the commission asks, lamenting the “cultural soup” in which “the cover-up it now has in mind is largely to ‘show’.”

The Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Harassment in the Catholic Church of Portugal began collecting victim testimony on January 11, 2022, confirming 512 complaints out of 564 received, extrapolating the existence of a minimum number of 4,815 victims over the past 72 years.

The Portuguese Bishops’ Conference will take its position on the nearly 500-page report at a plenary assembly scheduled for March 3 in Fatima.

JLG // FPA

Lusa/The End