Italy’s Catholic Church at crossroads over sexual abuse investigation
Hopes bishops’ conference will be start of reckoning
Savona, Italy – Francesco Zanardi has spent the past 12 years documenting alleged sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests in Italy, filling a vacuum he says is caused by the refusal of the country’s church thus far to launch a major investigation.
When Italian bishops meet next week to elect a new president, Zanardi is hoping to see the start of a long overdue reckoning for the church, whose leaders will discuss whether to commission an independent investigation of allegation of abuse similar to those carried out in France and Germany.
From his apartment in the centre of Savona in northern Italy, Zanardi, 51, runs Rete l’Abuso (The Abuse Network), which has one of the largest digital archives on allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the country.
He spends much of his time seeking court documents, tracking the whereabouts of suspected abusers, talking to lawyers who help him with cases, and vetting tips from victims.
“The common thread I have found among victims is that they don’t want it to happen to others because only a victim knows what it does to you inside, even if on the outside they are smiling and look normal,” Zanardi said.
In February, Zanardi and eight other groups formed a consortium called “Beyond the Great Silence” and launched the hashtag #ItalyChurchToo to put pressure on Italy’s church to agree to an impartial investigation.
The choice of its next president for a five-year term is crucial because bishops are divided over whether an eventual full-scale investigation should be internal, using existing resources such as diocesan antiabuse committees, or by an outside group, potentially comprising academics, lawyers and abuse experts.
They are also divided over whether it should be confined to the recent past or go back decades.
A spokesperson for the Italian bishops’ conference said they would discuss how to proceed when they meet.
The worldwide sexual abuse crisis has done the Roman Catholic Church massive damage to its credibility and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements, with some dioceses declaring bankruptcy.
Italy’s church, as a group, has not issued a sweeping formal apology for abuse though individual bishops have.
Victims groups say that for decades Italy’s church dealt with abuse like most other national churches – shuttling predator priests from parish to parish, putting faith in psychological therapy of dubious effect, discrediting the victim and using its power with civil authorities to hush things up.
In one case about 20 years ago, a bishop sent a letter and dossier to the Vatican about Nello Giraudo, then a priest who was accused of molesting adolescents at a camp and in a home for troubled juveniles. He and his lawyer have denied all accusations against him.
In the letter, seen by Reuters along with other correspondence and court documents, the bishop said he would try “as much as possible” to make sure that the priest would not have any more contact with children and adolescents.
But about two months later, the bishop appointed Giraudo to lead a parish in another area. But the assignment letter made no mention of staying away from children.
The priest underwent psychological therapy. Another letter disclosed that he had confided his “paedophile tendencies” to a confrere. Despite all the warnings he was not defrocked.
He left the priesthood in 2010 and in 2012 a court gave him a one-year suspended sentence in a plea bargain over of having molested a 17-year-old boy at a camp in 2005.
Giraudo declined to talk to a Reuters reporter who approached him outside his home in Savona to discuss the accusations against him.
Zanardi said he was abused by Giraudo when he was 12 and later fell into years of depression and drug abuse.
Victims like Zanardi say there are hundreds of cases where church authorities eilieve ther failed to intervene, covered up, or acted too late to stop abuse from being repeated.
Father Hans Zollner, a German who heads the department of safeguarding and prevention of sexual abuse at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, has for years been urging the Italian church to agree to an independent report.
“We can have the best intentions but as long as we do it inhouse nobody is going to becharges us,” Zollner said.
The bishops, meeting for five days behind closed doors at a hotel outside Rome, will vote for three candidates for president of the conference and propose them to Pope Francis to choose one among them.
Francis has expressed shame at the worldwide Catholic Church’s inability to deal with sexual abuse cases and said it must make itself a “safe home for everyone”. – Reuters