Catholic World News News Feature

The View from the South July 04, 2002

By Alejandro Bermudez

There is no doubt that, when a major event in the United States hits the media headlines, it usually becomes a prime-time story in Latin American as well. The O.J. Simpson trial and the Clinton-Lewinski scandal were followed by Latino viewers with an appetite not much different from that of their counterparts in North America. So it is no wonder that, in this particularly Catholic region, the heavy US media coverage on the scandals in the Catholic Church is being followed very closely. Nevertheless the reaction--among both the bishops and the rank-and-file Catholics of Latin America--seems to be evolving in a different direction.

The US media coverage, and even the visit to some Latin American capitals by Stephen Guschov, a lawyer representing sex-abuse victims in Boston, prompted the filing of copycat complaints and lawsuits all around Latin America. The major media outlets did their best to provide a local dimension to the sex scandals in the church, but there results were mixed.

In Mexico, the media focused in the fact that some of the priests who have been accused of molesting children in their own US dioceses were now living in the that country. In Brazil, on the other hand, the media were fairly successful in finding sensational stories quite similar to those running in the US media. But in most of Latin America--apart from cases of priests improperly involved with women--the media outlets have not succeeded (to date, at least) in making the case that sex abuse is a problem among Catholic priests.

In Mexico, local newspapers sought out Father Thomas Kane, after reporters in Massachusetts revealed that the priest fled to Mexico to avoid pending legal charges for pedophilia. "In a modest English institute in Guadalajara called 'World Wide Teachers Development Institute'," reported the daily El Heraldo, "Thomas Kane, the American priest accused of pedophilia in the United States, has invested most of his time to teach entrepreneurs and train teachers in English." But the magazine could not actually find the American priest: "Nevertheless, cardiac problems and a pneumonia, according to the director of the Institute, Fabián Eduardo Rodríguez, have prevented the priest from continuing with his courses. At present, his location is unknown."

On April 11, the Mexican bishops' conference admitted that there have been accusations of pedophilia against Mexican priests. Nevertheless, the Conference spokesman said that "although we have no figures, we can say that is far from being a significant problem among the clergy."

In Brazil, both Veja and Istoé,"the two most popular weekly magazines, run cover stories reporting cases such as the one of Father Edson Francisco dos Santos, a pastor of Sao Crispim, in the diocese of Franca, who is accused of having impregnated a 17-year-old girl… four days after his brother, also a priest, was removed from his parish after confessing to a sexual affair with a 15 year-old girl. According to Veja, in the last eight months, 11 priests in Brazil have been charged with various types of sexual misconduct, including three cases of pedophilia.

In Peru, early this year, a charge of pedophilia was presented against Father Mario Gazani Meza of the Diocese of Lurin, south of the capital city of Lima. Bishop José Ramón Gurruchaga immediately suspended the priest, and he is now facing trial.

Hungry for something more, the media resurrected the murky case of a Colombian seminarian who had been accused of pedophilia 7 years ago, and had allegedly escaped justice in the southern diocese of Tacna.

HOW SHOULD A BISHOP REACT?

The question of how a bishop should react to charges of a sexual misconduct--especially in cases where the misconduct is also a crime under civil law--has been raised frequently, and brought several different answers.

In Brazil, Bishop Diogenes Silva Matthes of Franca faced harsh criticism for moving one of the two accused brother priests, Edson Francisco, from his diocese to another in the state of Santa Catrina. The bishop said that this case of sexual misconduct, "as grave as it is, should not be equated to homosexual pedophilia," which would have prompted, he said "a quite different measure." The bishop said the priest should not be required to face criminal charges, although sex with a minor constitutes the legal offense of statutory rape in Brazil.

In Mexico, the bishops of both Ciudad Juárez, Renato Ascencio León, and Xalapa, Sergio Obeso Rivera, agreed at a press conference that "the dirty laundry, for the good of the Church, must be done in-house." They said that the Church was prepared to invoke "stiff canonical measures" to punish a pedophile priests and "prevent them from doing more damage." Bishop Ascencio León explained: "This is not because the Church feels herself to be above the civil law, but because we have a duty to prevent scandal and protect the faithful." But Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez of Guadalajara said at a different press conference that "the priesthood cannot be a paradise for pedophiles; therefore, the ministers of the Church who commit such crime must be immediately denounced, turned over, and punished properly by the civil law."

The Archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, has set forth a similar position. The cardinal said he backed Pope John Paul's recommendations to stop child abuse and sexual misconduct among priests, because "there is no place for pedophiles in the Church."

"The Pope has made clear that there is no place in the Church for priests, religious, or lay officials who have a problem that make them a potential or actual threat to children and the youth," said Cardinal Cipriani. He continued:

What the Pope has stated is nothing different that what the Code of Canon Law says, so it is now a matter of leadership. It is in the hands of bishops to do what it takes to prevent the damage made by priests and religious who betray the trust placed upon them.

DISCIPLINE, NOT DISSENT

In sharp contrast to the situation in the US, there are few Catholics in Latin America giving voice to the notion that the the scandal is a reason to depart from traditional Catholic teaching and disciplines such as priestly celibacy and the male-only priesthood. On the contrary, most people seem to believe that the way to prevent problems is to maintain discipline under clear leadership.

Thus for example, in reaction to the flood of sensational reports from the US, the Argentinean daily La Nación run an editorial saying that "some people, wrongly, have linked these cases of child abuse with priestly celibacy." The paper responded:

Such connection is a mistake. Pedophilia is a problem linked with perversions of the character, not celibacy. According to solid information from centers dealing with child abuse cases in Argentina, the psychological profile of the pedophile is a family man which, in 50 percent of the cases, abuses of a young relative within the family. Therefore, those who connect pedophilia with the need to review priestly celibacy are either acting out of misinformation or plain ill intentions.

In the view of Cardinal Sandoval Íñiguez, when sexual misconduct among priests occurs with some frequency, it "is a signal of problems in the chain of command that may go down to the seminaries." Nevertheless, the cardinal insists the problem is not particularly significant in the Latin American region, since in the late 1980s the reform promoted by Pope John Paul, and a Vatican visit to several seminaries in Latin America--which ended up with the closing of two formation centers in Brazil, one in Peru, and one in Mexico--helped address several problems related to recruitment and priestly formation.

"Certainly," says the cardinal, "today the formation of priests must still address the challenges posed by a permissive society, filled with sexual messages, for which priests must be psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually prepared." He believes, however, that much of the attention being focused on the issue of sexual misconduct among priests is a media-created frenzy. "There is an unfair generalization, based either on foreign scandals or on bringing up cases that are anywhere from 9 to 30 years old," the cardinal claimed.

POPULAR REACTIONS

Many rank-and-file Catholics in Latin America have expressed similar beliefs that the media have exaggerated the incidence of sexual misconduct by Catholics priests.

In Colombia, for example, angry readers of the El Tiempo, a liberal newspaper that is generally hostile to the Catholic Church, voiced their criticism of the way the paper had been highlighting cases of priestly pedophilia in the US--at a time when several highly respected local priests deserved more attention (the readers argued) for their efforts to deal with the problems of guerrilla warfare and drug trafficking in Colombia on a daily basis. The newspaper's ombudsman, Germán Rey, responded by saying that "the Catholic Church, being a respected institution, is not above scrutiny from society; on the contrary: the more credible an institution, the more accountable it has to be." Nevertheless, Rey admitted that "the media, in many cases, has shown a regrettably sensationalistic handling of these issues."

Many Catholics believe, in fact, some media outlets have taken advantage of the scandal in the US to promote their own agenda in Latin America.

In Argentina, were reports of pedophilia are almost non-existent, and the clergy has a significant level of credibility, some of the media gave special coverage to the scandal in the US during the week when the country's bishops were gathered for their regular annual meeting. The bishops were devoting their attention to the country's severe economic crisis, and hoping to offer some clear pastoral response. The media focus on sexual misconduct distracted public attention from the bishops' plans. "I don't think it was by chance that the most virulent anti-Catholic coverage took place when the bishops were discussing a statement about the local crisis," remarked Miguel Woites, a journalist for the Catholic News Agency AICA. "There are clearly some people in the media, tied to local powers, who do not want the Church to come out with a critical statement. So they try to put the Church on the defensive," he explained.

In Mexico, Jorge Serrano Limón, president of the Pro-Life organization Comité Nacional Pro-Vida, argued that some old and highly questionable reports about sexual misconduct by priests were being unearthed, and heavily reported, by media outlets with a similar interest in distracting attention from other Catholic concerns. These reports, he remarked, were being made "at a very critical moment, when the bishops were planning to insist in the reopening of the case of the murder of Cardinal Jesús Posadas." Serrano Limón insisted: "It is hard not to find a direct connection.

[AUTHOR ID} Alejandro Bermudez writes for the ACI-Prensa news agency, based in Lima, Peru.