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.
In UK RC Church rejects gay parents claims
The Roman Catholic Church has reacted angrily to comments endorsing gay parenthood from a charity with strong links to the Church.
Terry Prendergast of Marriage Care, which is partly funded by the Church, said there was no evidence children were harmed by having same-sex parents.
But the organisation representing Catholic bishops said children need parental role models of both genders.
It said Mr Prendergast, a former priest who has since married, was wrong.
Mr Prendergast made his comments to a gathering of gay Roman Catholics in Leicester.
He told the audience at the Quest conference that same-sex families, along with single and cohabiting parents, suffered discrimination and denigration because they fell short of the Vatican’s definition of what constituted a real family.
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 The views expressed by Terry Prendergast about the definition of family and marriage are clearly not a reflection of the Church’s teaching, nor those of the Bishops’ Conference  Catholic Bishops’ Conference
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Instead, he said, they should be held up as role models and an advert for Catholicism.
Mr Prendergast also claimed that there was no evidence to show that children of same-sex parents suffered in any way, and that the elements that made for successful child-rearing were stable relationships.
But the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales has insisted that Mr Prendergast is wrong.
Pastoral response
In a statement, the organisation acknowledged that although it was difficult to define what a family was, the Church still believed that stability for children came from having parents of opposite genders who could provide different role models.
See Church rejects gay parents claims
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UK Roman Catholic church-funded marriage agency backs gay and unmaried parents
Terry Prendergast, the chief executive of Marriage Care, claimed there is “no evidence” that children do better if they are brought up in a traditional two-parent family.
He claimed that those who live together out of wedlock are trying to lead good lives but find themselves “consigned to the dustbin” by the church.
His comments – to be made this weekend to Quest, a group of homosexual Catholics – go directly against the church’s teaching, which holds that homosexuality is sinful and that families should be based on the marriage of a man and a woman.
Mr Prendergast said: “We see, for example, that statistically children do best in a family where the adult relationship is steady, stable and loving – you should note here perhaps that I stress adult, not married, since there is no evidence that suggests that children do best with heterosexual couples.”
He claimed that God was present in the relationships of married, homosexual and cohabiting heterosexual relationships where there was “commitment, consent and covenant”.
He went on: “They want to live good lives according to the precepts of the Gospels. They are an advert for the Church, an advert that the Church often ignores or consigns to the wastebin.”
See Catholic church-funded marriage agency backs gay and unmaried parents Telegraph.co.uk
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“Connecticut homosexual Legislators keep the real Catholic Church under fire” whine right wing bllogger
Two Connecticut homosexual Legislators have declared war on the real Catholic Church.
Senator Andrew McDonald and Representative Michael Lawlor, are behind this vicious movement.
They aim to destroy the real Catholic Church by dragging Connecticut into Obama’s growing Marxist conspiracy to kill the Church; the last large obstacle to their plans for a Marxist America worshiping at a government approved Church.
The Diocese of Bridgeport is being attacked and labeled “an unregistered lobbyist” because it’s fighting back against their proposed state law to strip real Catholic priests of their authority to run parishes. This attack is designed to drain Church resources and it is.
These attacks beg the question: who benefits?
Ed note: Perhaps thsoe in the Roman Catholic church who make a living by “fightingt” gay marriage, hiding behind the “church’s” tax exempt status while playing politics? See Connecticut homosexual Legislators keep the real Catholic Church under fire.
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NY Archbishop: Would ‘defend’ gay rights, not marriage
(New York City) New York Archbishop-designate Timothy Dolan said Monday, on the eve of his installation, that he will challenge the idea that the Roman Catholic Church is unenlightened because it opposes gay marriage and abortion.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Dolan said he wants to restore pride …
Pope: Condoms not the answer to fighting AIDS
Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday that the distribution of condoms is not the answer in the fight against AIDS in Africa.
Benedict has never before spoken explicitly on condom use although he has stressed that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. The Vatican encourages …
In a First, Gay Rights Are Pressed at the UN
An unprecedented declaration seeking to decriminalize homosexuality won the support of 66 countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, but opponents criticized it as an attempt to legitimize pedophilia and other “deplorable acts.”
The United States refused to support the nonbinding measure, as did Russia, China, the Roman Catholic Church and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The Holy See’s observer mission issued a statement saying that the declaration “challenges existing human rights norms.”
The declaration, sponsored by France with broad support in Europe and Latin America, condemned human rights violations based on homophobia, saying such measures run counter to the universal declaration of human rights.
“How can we tolerate the fact that people are stoned, hanged, decapitated and tortured only because of their sexual orientation?” said Rama Yade, the French state secretary for human rights, noting that homosexuality is banned in nearly 80 countries and subject to the death penalty in at least six.
France decided to use the format of a declaration because it did not have the support for an official resolution. Read out by Ambassador Jorge Argüello of Argentina, the declaration was the first on gay rights read in the 192-member General Assembly itself.
Although laws against homosexuality are concentrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, more than one speaker addressing a separate conference on the declaration noted that the laws stemmed as much from the British colonial past as from religion or tradition.
See In a First, Gay Rights Are Pressed at the UN
New York Times, United States - .
UN (But Not the US) Comes Out Big for Gay Rights Village Voice
UN split over gay law reform call Queensland Pride
Coalition asks UN to decriminalize homosexuality AFP
US balks at backing condemnation of anti-gay laws The Associated Press
UN Splits On Gay Rights Issue On Top Magazine
UN’s first look at gay rights gets mixed results SmartBrief
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U.N.’s first look at gay rights gets mixed results
U.N.’s first look at gay rights gets mixed results
The United Nations’ first effort to protect gay rights garnered significant support in the General Assembly on Thursday, but failed to gain the backing of the U.S., Russia, China and the Roman Catholic Church. France and the Netherlands sponsored the nonbinding declaration, which called for a worldwide end to the criminalization of gay relationships and sex. TIME/The Associated Press (12/18) , The New York Times (12/18)
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Vatican Under Fire for Opposing UN Declaration on Sexual Rights
Journalists and activist groups are blasting the Vatican for what they say is its “grotesque” opposition to a U.N. declaration on gay rights — even though only a small collection of countries has supported the measure.
The Roman Catholic Church is facing a barrage of protests and searing editorials for opposing a French-sponsored decree that calls for an end to discrimination based on sexual or gender identity. The U.N. hopes to abolish summary executions, arbitrary arrests and “the deprivation of economic, social and cultural rights” of gays.
The Church’s opposition to the measure has enraged gay-rights activists, who are mobilizing nationwide protests at Catholic sites in Italy. Members of Italy’s largest gay-rights group, Arcigay, gathered inside the Vatican on Saturday, hanging nooses around their necks as they accused the Church of being an “accomplice in the martyrdom” of homosexuals.
See Vatican Under Fire for Opposing UN Declaration on Sexual Rights
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