The President of the Republic said this Saturday that precautions must be taken in cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and that this includes “removal from office or pastoral duties that must be suspended.”
“I understand that this is such an obvious issue, so obvious, such an obvious issue of prevention and taking precautions to protect possible new victims and protect those who may be involved, that I think that careful thinking will lead to the fact that first, on incomprehensibly, this has not been done,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Souza.
In Gondomar, in the Porto region, on the sidelines of the Extraordinary Congress of the Portuguese League of Firefighters, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in statements to journalists, defended that “there are things that need to be done, and the sooner the better.”
“It was said at the Bishops’ Conference that meditation is going on. Continuing reflection should mean opening the way to what has been done and could be done differently,” he said.
Asked about the decisions of some dioceses not to fire priests suspected of sexual abuse of minors, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa did not answer specific cases or specify which dioceses he was referring to, but reiterated that those responsible should be removed. .
For the President of the Republic, the first immediate measure is to “do not waste any more time on anything that cannot be wasted.”
“Second, take full responsibility. Thirdly, to take preventive measures, which means the removal from the performance of functions or pastoral duties of those whom these preventive measures should remove, and the manifestation of the will to correct the victims, ”he added.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also expressed concern about the future: “Obviously, there must be concern for the future, because it is a national problem,” he concluded.
In an interview with RTP and Público published on Thursday evening, the president of the republic has already said that the church must take preventive measures to avoid new sexual abuse in cases where suspects have already been identified, and expressed disappointment with the episcopal conference.
An independent commission for the study of child sexual abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church, set up by the Portuguese Episcopal Conference and coordinated by child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, corroborated 512 testimonies, extrapolating at least 4,815 victims.
The testimonies refer to cases that took place between 1950 and 2022, that is, for the period covered by the work of the commission.
The Commission submitted to the Episcopal Conference of Portugal a list of alleged active rapists.
In a report released in February, the commission warned that the data collected from church records on cases of sexual abuse should be understood as “the tip of the iceberg.”