Church pedophilia scandal grows in Latin America

(Sao Paulo) The detention of an 83-year-old priest in Brazil for allegedly abusing boys as young as 12 in a case involving lurid videotape and a congressional investigation is the latest scandal to hit the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America.

The allegations against Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa – and two other Brazilian priests – have made huge headlines throughout this Catholic nation and come amid accusations of sexual activity by priests across the region as well as in Europe and the U.S.

The scandal erupted when Brazilian television network SBT last month broadcast a tape of Barbosa in bed with a 19-year-old that was widely distributed on the Internet.

The station said the video was secretly filmed in January 2009 and sent anonymously to the network. It was not clear if the 19-year-old, identified as a former altar boy who had worked with Barbosa for four years, had previous sexual relations with the priest.

SBT reporters went to Barbosa’s house and confronted him. Asked if he ever abused boys, Barbosa said he could only answer such a question “in confession” and cut off the interview.

Brazil’s legislature launched a sex abuse investigation, which produced allegations Barbosa molested boys. The elderly priest was detained late Sunday.

Judge Romulo Vasconcelos told Globo TV on Monday that he requested Barbosa’s immediate detention out of fear the priest would flee the country.

The case now goes to prosecutors, who will decide whether to file child abuse charges.

Sen. Magno Malta, the Brazilian lawmaker leading the legislature’s probe, called Barbosa’s detention a milestone in the fight against child abuse in Brazil.

Congressional investigators said more than 20 witnesses were called and some testified Barbosa and two other priests in the same northeastern archdiocese had abused boys as young as 12, plying them with money, clothes and other gifts.

Bishop Valerio Breda of the Penedo archdiocese in the northeastern state of Alagoas said recently that all three priests had been suspended and that the church was conducting its own investigation.

One of the accused priests, Edison Duarte, was given immunity for cooperating with authorities, Malta said in a statement issued by his senate office. The third priest – Raimundo Marques – also is being investigated but denies any wrongdoing. He has not been arrested.

Church officials have not responded to calls requesting information on where Barbosa and the other priests had worked in the past, and it was not immediately clear if Barbosa had a lawyer.

Barbosa told investigators that “he is not a pedophile,” but after three former altar boys testified he had abused them, he asked for forgiveness, said Renato Paoliello, a spokesman for Malta.

Latin Americans priests have faced a cascade of accusations of abuse of minors recently.

Just this month, church officials in Uruguay confirmed they had not revealed the whereabouts to police of a defrocked priest who fled home to his family in Uruguay after a nun accused him of raping three children in Bolivia. And a priest in Chile was charged with eight cases of sexually abusing minors, including a girl he had fathered.

A Mexican woman charged in March that the deceased, scandal-tainted founder of a conservative Catholic religious order abused one of the two sons she said he fathered with her. The Legionaries of Christ, the order founded by the Rev. Marcial Maciel, had acknowledged a little over a year earlier in a separate case that Maciel had molested seminarians.

In a report last week, The Associated Press detailed how its reporters around the globe had found 30 cases of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad by the church and some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in other countries, and some abused again. The probe spanned 21 nations across six continents.

Feeding the controversy, Pope Benedict XVI’s second-in-command outraged many last week in Chile when he said homosexuality and not celibacy was the primary reason for the abuse.

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told reporters April 12 at a news conference in Santiago. “That is the problem.”

The comments by Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, were condemned by gay advocacy groups, politicians and even the French government.

The scandals have been closely followed in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other nation in the world.

On Sunday, a teary-eyed Pope Benedict XVI met with abuse victims in Malta and said the church will do everything possible to protect children and bring abusive priests to justice, the Vatican said.

The emotional moment carried no new admissions from the Vatican, which has strongly rejected accusations that efforts to cover up for abusive priests were directed by the church hierarchy for decades. But the pontiff told the men that the church would “implement effective measures” to protect children, the Vatican said, without offering details.

Prop 8 backer stands by views on pedophilia

Lawyers for two same-sex couples challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage plan to wrap up their case Friday following the incendiary testimony of a proponent who said he thinks gays are more likely to be pedophiles and that allowing them to wed would lead to the legalization of polygamy and …

Sean Hannity can’t quit Kevin Jennings

A Fox News host accused the Safe School Czar and GLSEN-founder of pedophilia-by-association.

Gay Dems complain DNC cut off funding, drop support for Biden event

Theboard of directors of the National Stonewall Democrats are dropping their support for a June 25 DNC fundraiser with Vice President Joe Biden over, they wrote in an email obtained by POLITICO, a combination of policy slights and the claim that they’ve been cut off from traditional party funding.

In the email to Tom Petrillo, who runs the party’s substantial gay fundraising operation, the board members write:

[W]e are incredibly disappointed that the DNC has made a decision to withhold any financial support to National Stonewall Democrats this year but is in turn asking us to help raise money for the DNC in a difficult financial environment. The DNC has historically supported National Stonewall through sponsorship of the annual Capitol Champions event. This year, we did not receive any support. The DNC has traditionally provided materials for the many Pride parades and festivals around the country to help educate the LGBT community about why the Democratic Party is the Party for full LGBT equality. This year we were informed that we would not be receiving any materials or support for producing materials for the various nationwide Pride activities. These decisions were very disappointing.

We’d be remiss to also not mention that the recent legal brief of the Obama Administration defending DOMA is incredibly hurtful. The members of the Board and our membership put our hopes, our dollars and our time into ensuring the election of Barack Obama because we believed that he supported us. To now have his Administration refer to our relationships in the same terms used by our long time enemies such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson hurts on so many levels. To have our committed and loving relationships referred to as the moral equivalent of incest and pedophilia is not something that any of us ever expected from this Administration considering how hard we worked to be seen and respected. For that reason alone, advocating for attendance at a fundraiser to support the Administration and the DNC, while they have not condemned this hurtful language, is not something our membership will receive positively.

The group says it’s not “boycotting” the June 25 fundraiser with Joe Biden; it just won’t encourage its members to attend.

Gay money is, historically, of outsized importance to the Democratic Party. Howard Dean, in particular, launched his presidential campaign in part on enthusiasm from gay donors about his support for civil unions, and maintained those relationships as chairman. For update see Gay Dems complain DNC cut off funding, drop support for Biden event

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Rick Warren works to calm gay marriage controversy

Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren continues to be haunted by past statements on gay marriage, and tried to soften his anti-gay marriage posture last week onLarry King‘s show. Warren stood by his belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but said he’s never been an activist on the issue.

Part of what’s gotten him into hot water was a video-taped interview, available on the Internet, done before the Nov. 4 vote to implement the Proposition 8 gay marriage ban. In it, Warren seemed to liken gay marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy.

“I’m opposed to having a brother and sister together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to having an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.”

The interviewer then asks, “Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

“Oh, I do,” responded the megachurch leader, whose subsequent selection to give Barack Obama’s inaugural invocation stirred controversy.

Warren later posted a video on his Web site to try to clarify his view. But there was still more clarifying going on with Larry King last week.

“I am not an anti-gay or anti-marriage activist. Never have been, never will be,” he said. “During the whole Proposition 8 thing, I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement.

“The week before the vote, somebody in my church said, ‘Pastor Rick, what do you think about this?’ And I sent a note to my own members that said, ‘I actually believe that marriage really should be defined – that that definition should be saved between a man and a woman.’ And then all of a suddenly out of it they made me, you know something that I really wasn’t. …

“I wrote to all my gay friends, the leaders that I knew and actually apologized to them. That never got out. There were some things said – everybody should have 10% grace when they say public statements and I was asked a question that made it sound like I equated gay marriage with pedophilia or incest which I absolutely do not believe.”

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Rick Warren works to calm gay marriage controversy

The interviewer then asks, “Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

“Oh, I do,” responded the megachurch leader, whose subsequent selection to give Barack Obama’s inaugural invocation stirred controversy.

Warren later posted a video on his Web site to try to clarify his view. But there was still more clarifying going on with Larry King last week.

“I am not an anti-gay or anti-marriage activist. Never have been, never will be,” he said. “During the whole Proposition 8 thing, I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement.

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Gays, lesbians hopeful despite inaugural pastor

Hope – and the idea that the country’s new leader would break down barriers of discrimination – overshadowed the disappointment many gays and lesbians felt when an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage gave the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration Tuesday.

“I am completely hopeful, optimistic, relieved, enthusiastic – even knowing that he’s going to disappoint,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Obama’s decision to have the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural prayer dampened Kendell’s expectations “of how culturally competent Obama is on gay and lesbian issues,” she said. “I think it’s a reminder of how much work we have to do.”

Warren, Evangelical pastor of the Saddleback Church in Orange County, was a chief proponent of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure approved last year that bars gays and lesbians from marrying.

He also has equated same-sex marriage to incest, polygamy and pedophilia and has said that gays and lesbians should resist the urge to act on their sexuality. Warren made no such references during the globally broadcast invocation.

Instead, he spoke of the need to pursue commitment to “justice for all” and “civility in our actions, even when we differ.”

Gays, lesbians hopeful despite inaugural pastor