They were minors, come from all regions and all social categories, and suffered sexual violence which is often already prescribed: in Portugal, an independent commission estimated that the « minimal name » victims of sexual violence within the Portuguese Catholic Church since 1950 was 4,815 people.
This commission of six experts, which presented its final report on Monday February 13 in Lisbon, heard more than 500 testimonies during its work of about a year, enabling it to“to arrive at a much larger network of victims”according to the coordinator of this commission of experts, the child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht.
The latter, charged at the end of 2021 by the Portuguese Church with forming a team to measure the extent of pedocrime within it, specified that the vast majority of the crimes denounced were already prescribed. “It is now difficult for everything to remain the same concerning sexual violence against minors in Portugal and the awareness of its traumatic impact”he told the press and several church officials.
A “scourge of the life of the Church”
The reaction of the President of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, José Ornelas, is expected at the end of the day on Monday February 13. Furthermore, the Portuguese bishops have planned to meet at the beginning of March to draw the conclusions of the independent report and to “to eradicate as much as possible this scourge from the life of the Church”, said in January the secretary of the episcopal conference, Father Manuel Barbosa. In April 2022, the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon and highest prelate of the Portuguese Church, Manuel Clemente, said he was ready to “acknowledge the mistakes of the past” and to ” ask for forgiveness “ to the victims.
Faced with the thousands of cases of sexual violence committed by priests uncovered around the world and accusations of a cover-up by members of the clergy, Pope Francis promised in 2019 to deliver a “Total Battle” against pedophilia within the Church. This is also expected in the Portuguese capital for the World Youth Days, which will take place in early August.
In several countries, including Ireland, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands, initiatives have tried to take the measure of this phenomenon. In France, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church estimated in a report published in October 2021 the number of adults who suffered sexual violence when they were minors by a priest, a deacon or a religious at 216,000. This number rises to 330,000 if we include the victims of lay people linked to the Catholic Church (school supervisors, for example).