Prato, Jan 22, 2020: Priests from a Catholic group banned by the Vatican – including its charismatic founder – are under police investigation for child abuse after two brothers accused them of sex attacks.
Don Giglio Gilioli, 73, and eight of his priests and brothers in the Disciples of the Annunciation community, based at Prato in Italy’s Tuscany, were named by the siblings who say they were abused over a period of eight years.
Gilioli, a Veronese priest, is said to have founded the community to help disadvantaged children after arriving in Prato in 2005 with 500 euros in his pocket.
Bishop Giovanni Nerbini of Prato announced January 29 that he had personally reported the case to the police and pledged the church’s cooperation with the investigation.
The Vatican banned the Disciples of the Annunciation community in December after two investigations found serious concerns about the way it was run
It follows the group – which had been an officially approved association of the faithful – being shut down in December by the Vatican after two investigations by the church uncovered serious concerns and members fled the group.
The Vatican has closed or taken over several similar associations – often headed by charismatic leaders – in recent years after allegations of sexual abuse.
The local Prato newspaper, La Nazione, reported that the nine under investigation for sex abuse included five priests, a brother and three religious order priests.
The alleged victims are said to be two brothers who were entrusted to the religious community by their parents.
One of the boys, who is physically and mentally disabled, says he was abused between 2008 and 2016 by eight of the nine suspects. His brother was allegedly attacked on multiple occasions between 2009 and 2012 by two of the suspects.
The alleged abuse took place in the group’s headquarters in Prato and in its offices further north in Calomini. Police have been searching the offices in recent days.
The Italian church has only recently started to seriously tackle the problem of clergy abuse after years of cover ups and denials.
In December, Pope Francis abolished the ‘pontifical secret’ code of confidentiality used in clergy sexual abuse cases after mounting criticism that the obligation has been used to protect pedophiles
Clergy are still not obliged to report child sex abuse in Italy.
Victims have long demanded that the Italian hierarchy compel bishops and religious superiors to report suspected abuse to police even without the legal requirement.
Bishop Nerbini, who was put in place last September, reported the case to the police after his predecessor had failed to do so when he received the victims’ complaint in June, reporting it only to the Vatican as required under the Catholic Church’s in-house canon law.
A canonical investigation is under way as well, Nerbini said.
In December, Pope Francis abolished the ‘pontifical secret’ code of confidentiality used in clergy sexual abuse cases after mounting criticism that the obligation has been used to protect paedophiles, silence victims and keep authorities from investigating crimes.
Francis decreed that information in abuse cases must be protected by church leaders to ensure its ‘security, integrity and confidentiality’.
But he also said the ‘pontifical secret’ code no longer applies to abuse-related accusations, trials and decisions under the Catholic Church’s canon law.
Francis also raised from 14 to 18 the cut-off age below which the Vatican considers pornographic images to be child pornography.
The new laws were issued on Francis’ 83rd birthday in response to the global explosion of the abuse scandal, his own missteps in dealing with the issue, and demands for greater transparency and accountability from victims, law enforcement and ordinary Catholics alike.
The new norms are the latest amendment to the Catholic Church’s in-house canon law – a parallel legal code that metes out ecclesial justice for crimes against the faith – in this case relating to the sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable people by priests, bishops or cardinals.
In this legal system, the worst punishment a priest can incur is being defrocked, or dismissed from the clerical state.
Pope Benedict XVI had decreed in 2001 that these cases must be dealt with under ‘pontifical secret’, the highest form of secrecy in the church. The Vatican had long insisted that such confidentiality was necessary to protect the privacy of the victim, the reputation of the accused and the integrity of the canonical process.
However, such secrecy also served to keep the scandal hidden, to prevent law enforcement from accessing documents and to silence victims, many of whom often believed that ‘pontifical secret’ prevented them from going to the police to report their priestly abusers.
While the Vatican has long tried to insist this is not the case, it has never mandated that bishops and religious superiors report sex crimes to police, and in the past has encouraged bishops not to do so.
According to the new instruction, which was signed by the Vatican secretary of state but authorised by the pope, the Vatican still does not mandate reporting the crimes to police, saying religious superiors are obliged to do so where civil reporting laws require it.
But it goes further than the Vatican has gone before, saying: ‘Office confidentiality shall not prevent the fulfilment of the obligations laid down in all places by civil laws, including any reporting obligations, and the execution of enforceable requests of civil judicial authorities.’
Source: dailymail.co.uk