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Vatican City.- The nun no longer confesses regularly, after an Italian priest imposed herself upon her while she was the most vulnerable: she told her sins in a class academic almost 20 years ago.
Read more: The sexual abuse charged to the Chilean church to bad filters
At that time, the sister only told her provincial superior and her spiritual director, silenced by the secret culture of the Catholic Church his vows of obedience and his own fear, repulsion and shame.
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He opened a great injury in me. I claimed that it did not happen.
After decades of silence, the nun is one of the few in the world who has recently presented on a topic that the Catholic Church has not yet found. agreement: the abuse of nuns by priests and bishops . An AP examination revealed that cases have appeared in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, which shows that the problem is global and widespread, thanks to the tradition of status second class ] sisters in the Catholic Church and their deep submission to the men who lead them
Some nuns now find their voice, pushed by the movement #MeToo and recognition growing that adults may be victims of sexual abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. The sisters go public in part because of the years of inaction of church leaders, even after Vatican important studies on the problem in Africa were reported. The issue has been exacerbated by scandals involving child sexual abuse and, more recently, by adults, including revelations that one of the most important American cardinals, Theodore McCarrick, sexually abused and harassed his seminarians.
The extent of the abuse of the nuns is not clear, at least outside the Vatican. Victims are reluctant to report abuses because of well-founded fears that they will not be believed, experts told the Associated Press. Church leaders are reluctant to acknowledge that some priests and bishops simply ignore their celibacy vows knowing that their secrets will remain.
However, this week, about half a dozen sisters in a small religious congregation in Chile were made public on national television with their stories of abuse by priests and other nuns and how their superiors did nothing to stop him. A nun in India recently filed an official police complaint accusing a bishop of rape which would have been unthinkable a year ago.
Cases in Africa have appeared periodically; In 2013, for example, a famous priest in Uganda wrote a letter to his superiors mentioning "romantic priests involved with religious sisters", for which he was quickly suspended from the church until He apologized in May. And the sister in Europe spoke with the PA to help bring the problem to light.
"I am so sad that it took so long for this to come out because there were reports long ago" AP Karlijn Demasure, one of the leading experts on sexual abuse and Abuse of power in the church.
I hope that steps are being taken to take care of the victims and put an end to this type of abuse.
TAKING THE VICTIMS SERIO
The Vatican refused to comment on measures taken, if any, to assess the magnitude of the problem in the world, what it did to punish criminals and take care of the victims. A Vatican official said it is up to local church leaders to punish priests who sexually abuse their sisters, but such crimes often go unpunished in civil and canonical courts.
Under cover of anonymity because he was not allowed to express himself on the subject, he stated that only a few cases reach the Holy See for investigation. This was a reference to the fact that the Catholic Church has no clear measures to investigate and punish bishops who abuse themselves or allow abusers to remain in their homes. ranks, a legal gap that has recently been highlighted for the McCarrick case
The official said that the church has recently focused much of its attention on child protection, but that the vulnerable adults "deserve the same protection".
Consecrated women should be encouraged to speak when they are abused. Bishops should be encouraged to take them seriously and to ensure that priests are punished if they are guilty.
But being taken seriously is often the most difficult hurdle for sisters who are sexually abused, said Demasure, until recently executive director of the Child Protection Center of the United States. Church at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the leading expert group on the subject.
They (the priests) can always say – she wanted it -, said Demasure. It is also difficult to get rid of the opinion that it is always the woman who seduces the man, not the other way around.
Demasure says that many priests in Africa, for example, are fighting celibacy because of traditional and cultural beliefs about the importance of having children. Novices, who are new to religious life, are particularly vulnerable because they often need a letter from their pastor to be accepted into certain religious congregations. "And sometimes they have to pay for it," he said.
And when do these women become pregnant?
Most of the time, she has an abortion. Even more than once. And he pays for that. A nun does not have money. A priest, yes, she said.
There may also be a price to pay to denounce the problem.
In 2013, Reverend Anthony Musaala of Kampala, Uganda, wrote what he called an open letter to members of the local Catholic institution about "many cases" of alleged sexual intercourse even with nuns. He claimed that it was "a secret that many Catholic priests and some bishops, in Uganda and elsewhere, no longer live the chastity of celibacy."
He was punished, even though Ugandan newspapers regularly report cases of priests trapped in sexual escapades. The subject is even the subject of a popular novel that is taught in high schools.
In 2012, a priest sued a bishop in western Uganda who had suspended him and ordered him to stop interacting with at least four nuns The priest, who denied the allegations, lost the case, and the sisters withdrew their own lawsuit against the bishop.
Archbishop John Baptist Odama, head of the conference of local bishops in Uganda, told the AP that unverified or verified charges against individual priests should not be used to defame the person. Whole church.
Individual cases may happen, if they are there, he said Thursday. Individual cases should be treated as individual cases.
ABUSE OF THE SACRIFICE OF THE NUNIS IS NOT A NEW PROBLEM
Long before the most recent incidents, confidential reports on the problem centered on Africa and AIDS were prepared in the 1990s by members of religious orders for senior officials of the United Nations. 39; church. In 1994, the late Sr. Maura O. Donohue wrote the most comprehensive study of an investigation of six nations and 23 nations, in which she learned that 29 nuns had been impregnated into a single congregation.
The nuns, she said, were considered sexual partners. "safe" for priests who feared to be infected with HIV if they resorted to prostitutes or to women of the general population.
Four years later, in a report addressed to religious superiors and Vatican officials, Sr. Marie McDonald stated that the harassment and rape of African sisters by priests is "supposedly common". Sometimes, when a nun becomes pregnant, the priest insists on an abortion.
The problem traveled when the sisters were sent to Rome to study. They often turn to seminarians and priests for help in writing essays. Sexual favors are sometimes the payment that they must make for such help, according to the report.
The reports should never have been made public. The National Catholic Reporter of EE. UU He put them online in 2001, exposing the depths of a scandal that the church had been trying to hide for a long time. To date, the Vatican has not said what it did, in any case, with the information.
Sister Paola Moggi, a member of the Comboni Sisters Missionaries, a religious congregation with a significant presence in 16 African countries, said in her experience that the African church "has made great strides" since the 1990s, when she did missionary work in Kenya, but the problem was not eliminated.
"I found in Africa absolutely emancipated sisters who say they think of a priest whom they know and who can ask for sex."
I also found Sisters who said, "Well, you have to understand their needs, and although we only have a monthly cycle, a man has a cycle." He said that the scandal of priests who allegedly abused sisters exploded publicly in d & # 39; Two continents, Asia and Latin America, suggest that the problem is not limited to Africa and that some women are now ready to break the taboo of denouncing it publicly. [19659046] Illustrative photo: Pixabay
In India, a sister of the Missionaries of Jesus filed a police report last month claiming that a bishop had raped her in May 2014 during a visit to the state from Kerala, very Christian, and then sexually abused a dozen times over the next two years, Indian media reported. The bishop denied the accusation and said that the woman was fighting back against him for disciplining her for her own sexual crimes.
In Chile, the scandal of sisters of the Good Samaritan an order dedicated to health care in the diocese of Talca exploded together with the entire Catholic hierarchy of the country was under the fire decades of sexual abuse and concealment. The scandal became so serious that in May, Francisco summoned all the Chilean bishops to Rome, where they all proposed to resign en masse.
The case, exposed by Chilean public radio, involves accusations of priests who they embrace nuns even when they are naked, and some religious sisters sexually abuse younger ones . The victims said they informed their mother, but that she did nothing. The new temporary bishop of Talca promised to find justice.
The Vatican is well aware that religious sisters have long been particularly vulnerable to abuse. Perhaps the most sensational story was detailed in the 2013 book "The Sisters of St. Ambrose" based on the records of the 1860 Vatican inquisition lawsuit on misuse , hijackings, murders and "false sanctity" inside a Roman convent. Once something was known, the Vatican lost all the strength of its Inquisition to investigate and punish.
It remains to be seen what the Vatican will do now that there are more sisters expressing their opinion.
HISTORY OF A SISTER – AND YEARS OF PAIN
The sister who spoke to the PA of her assault in 2000 during a confession in a university in Bologna tied her rosary by telling the details
She remembered exactly how she and the Priest sat in two armchairs facing each other. the classroom of the university, with eyes on the floor. At a certain moment, she said, the priest got up from his chair and forced himself closer to her. Small but not frail, she was so surprised, she said, that she grabbed him by the shoulders and with all his might, she got up and pushed him to his chair.
The nun continued her confession that day. But the aggression – and the subsequent advance of another priest a year later – finally led her to no longer confess to a priest who was not his spiritual father, who lives in another country.
The place of confession must be a place of salvation, liberty and mercy. Because of this experience, confession became a place of sin and abuse of power.
She recalled at one point that a priest she had confided had apologized "in the name of the church". But no one took any action against the offender, who was a prominent university professor.
The woman told her story to the AP without knowing that at the same time a funeral was taking place for the priest who had assaulted her for 18 years. Before
he later declared that the combination of his death and his decision to speak raised great weight
"I see it as two freedoms: freedom of weight for a victim and the freedom of one lie and violation on the part of the priest, "he said. "I hope it will help other sisters to get rid of that weight."
