“These testimonies allow us to establish a much broader network of victims, of at least 4,815,” child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht told a press conference in Lisbon, the AFP news agency reported.
In this sense, the members of the commission of experts exposed for two hours, in a crude and detailed way, the conclusions of 512 validated testimonies together with their investigations in the church archives and their interviews with their senior managers in the hierarchy.
“The report published today reveals a harsh and tragic reality. We nevertheless believe that change is underway,” said the president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP), the Bishop of Leiria-Fátima, José Ornelas.
“We apologize to all the victims,” he added, referring to an “open wound that (…) shames us,” after attending the presentation of the report.
Pope Francis plans to travel to the Portuguese capital in August for the World Youth Days and could meet with the victims, the Auxiliary Archbishop of Lisbon, Américo Aguiar, recently said.
The investigation into the clergy of Portugal was commissioned in 2021 by the church of this country with a deep-rooted Catholic tradition. In October, a team of six experts, headed by Strecht, announced that it had recorded 424 legitimate testimonies from alleged victims but warned that the total number was “much higher.”
The facts denounced reveal “serious situations that have persisted for decades, which become more evident the further back one goes in time and which, in some places, have acquired truly endemic proportions,” the team concluded in October, during a first assessment.
Most of the reported crimes expired, but 25 accusations were transmitted to the judicial authorities, which opened investigations. One of those cases is that of Alexandra, the second name of a 43-year-old woman who prefers to remain anonymous and was raped by a priest when she was preparing for the life of a nun at the age of 17. “It’s very difficult to talk about it in Portugal,” a country where 80% of the population defines itself as Catholic, explains Alexandra, who is now a mother, trained in computing and works as a kitchen helper.
“I had been keeping this secret for many years, but I felt that it was increasingly difficult to manage it alone,” she says during a telephone interview with the AFP agency. She came to denounce her attacker before the ecclesiastical authorities, but she felt “ignored”. Three years later, experts from the independent commission offered to listen to her and provide psychological support.
In April, the cardinal-patriarch of Lisbon and highest prelate of the Portuguese church, Manuel Clemente, declared his willingness to “acknowledge the mistakes of the past” and “ask forgiveness” from the victims. “That the bishops ask for forgiveness means nothing to me. We don’t know if they mean it,” replied Alexandra, who said she felt “disgusted” by the church and its cover-up of sexual abuse.
Pope Francis, who will travel to the Portuguese capital in August, could meet with the victims. Faced with the thousands of cases that have come to light around the world and the accusations of cover-up, the Pontiff promised in 2019 to eradicate the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy within the church. Several countries published reports on these crimes, including France, Ireland, Germany, Australia or the Netherlands.
The Portuguese bishops will meet in early March to draw conclusions from the report and “to eradicate as far as possible this scourge from the life of the Church,” the secretary of the episcopal conference, Father Manuel Barbosa, declared in January.
