In general, the Portuguese Catholic hierarchy supports the Pope’s position on abuses.

The coordinator of the Independent Commission for the Study of Child Sexual Abuse in the Church said on Monday that, in general, the Portuguese Catholic hierarchy “endorses” the Pope’s stance in condemning violence.

“With some discrepancies, and in some cases, the opinion of bishops and superiors general, who were interviewed individually, is clearly favorable to what was conveyed by Pope” Francis, who in 2019 lux mundi “that” Crimes of child sexual abuse are crimes that offend our Lord, cause physical, psychological and spiritual harm to the victims and alienate them from society,” said Pedro Strecht.

Speaking at the launch of this Independent Commission’s report on cases of abuse in the Catholic Church since 1950, child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht warned that “you have to look at the interpretation” of the numbers in the document, 512 cases confirmed in 564 testimonies received. , pointing to an extrapolation of the minimum number of victims in the order of 4815 and “it is important to note that in fact only since 1995 these crimes have been listed in the Portuguese Penal Code as child sexual abuse. , and only since 2007 has become public.

“We also know that the percentage of its existence practiced by members of the Church is very small in terms of the reality of sexual abuse of minors in general,” Pedro Strecht added, adding that it is also “a small number of abusers inside from the bosom of the Church, and it is so it remains important not to confuse the part with the whole.”

The Catholic Church’s Independent Commission for the Study of Child Sexual Abuse began accepting testimony on January 11 last year.

Cases of sexual violence revealed during 2022 shocked the Church and Portuguese society itself, similar to what happened with similar initiatives in other countries, with alleged cases of cover-up by the religious hierarchy prompting apologies, in a year in which the Church is now also involved in controversy with the organization of World Youth Day in Lisbon.

This Monday, the first reaction of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP), chaired by Bishop José Ornelas of Leiria-Fatima, will be known, and an extraordinary plenary meeting of the CEP has already been convened for March 3 to analyze the report.

The independent commission, chaired by child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, also includes psychiatrist Daniel Sampaio, former justice minister and retired judge Alvaro Laborinho Lucio, sociologist and researcher Ana Nunez de Almeida, social worker and family therapist Filipa Tavares, and filmmaker Catherine Vasconcellos.