Brazilian authorities are investigating three priests accused of sexually abusing altar boys after a video allegedly showing one case of abuse was broadcast on television, police and church officials said on Tuesday.
The case came to light after the SBT network aired a video purportedly showing an 82-year-old priest having sex with a 19-year-old altar boy who worked for him for four years. Other young men appeared on the report saying that they, too, had been abused by Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa.
Also under investigation are Monsignor Raimundo Gomes, 52, and Father Edilson Duarte, 43, for allegedly having sexual relations with boys and young men.
A statement from the Church said the three priests are “supposedly involved in acts [yet to be proven] of sexual abuse.” The statement did not say whether the men admit or deny guilt. None of the priests could be located to ask about the case and the Church would not provide contact details for them.
A church official in the Penedo archdiocese, in the northeastern state of Alagoas, said the three have been suspended. A police official said the men are free pending the investigation, which should last until the end of April. Both the church official and the policeman spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev Federico Lombardi, said officials there were aware of the case.
In its report last week, SBT showed footage of a man who looks like Barbosa having sex with the 19-year-old. The network said the footage was secretly filmed in January last year by a 21-year-old man who charges Barbosa had abused him since age 12.
SBT said the video was sent anonymously to the network and reporters went to the town of 200,000 people to investigate last month.
An SBT reporter visited Barbosa’s house to conduct an interview and confront him with the allegations.
Before raising the allegations of sexual abuse, the reporter asks if the priest had ever sinned.
“Who has never committed a sin?” Barbosa responds.
The priest is then asked if the region has problems with pedophilia.
“I think it is more [a problem] of homosexuality than pedophilia,” Barbosa says.
Asked directly if he ever abused boys, Barbosa says he could only answer such a question “in confession.” He then ends the interview, which was aired on Thursday and posted on SBT’s YouTube page.
Bishop Valerio Breda released a statement saying that in light of the “grave and lamentable facts made public on television,” Barbosa and the two other priests had been suspended.
“We reproach, without restriction and with hearts broken by shame and sadness, the facts in the report which, despite their not having been proven, have outraged human and Christian conscience,” Breda wrote.
He said none of the alleged victims or their families had ever contacted the Church regarding the allegations of abuse.
Breda said the Church was cooperating with police and would also conduct its own investigation.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
RSS