By Mário Cabral e Sá
Unsurprisingly, RTP, the Portuguese TV channel was the first to broadcast Pope Benedict’s apology to thousands of young victims of paedophile priests. It was a touching act of sincere recognition.
It had brought "shame and humiliation on him and the entire Roman Catholic Church," he said on his way to 10 Downing Street, during his recent official visit to UK, the highlight of which was the beatification of the late Protestant Cardinal Newman who is making his way to sainthood much faster than our native aspirants to the honour, the Blessed Padre José Vaz and the Venerable Pe Agnelo.
Paedophilia by priests has been an open secret. Some archdioceses have tried to buy the silence of the victims and gone bankrupt in the process.
A logical solution would be to release such priests and nuns from celibacy vows and hand them over to civilian authorities. Celibacy should be a matter of choice, not a mandate. It wasn’t mandatory in Christ’s time. In fact some of his apostles were married, like St Peter to mention an example, and he was the "chosen one" by Christ himself to succeed him after he gave up his terrestrial existence. It is much later – no one seems to be able to put a precise date to it – that celibacy became a preordination priestly vow.
Somehow, it seems there is a prejudice against women. Protestant women have been ordained, say the mass and head it chaplaincies, but the move to raise them to bishoprics has so far been firmly resisted. The belief that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, and therefore, women have a subordinate role, seems to be unshakable – by women themselves. In the 19th century, a "fable" was floated that there was a lady pope, but for the sake of convenience she was named John VIII.
As Kushwant Singh once wrote "Christian rituals have a dignity and solemnity of their own." I made it a point to attend on Sunday the beatification ceremony on RTP. It lasted the better half of three hours and I felt it was time very well spent. True, Benedict XIII is no Caruso. Neither is he a "desafinado", but it was a joy to hear the soloists, the male as well as the female and the choir. I am sure each of them meant the words they sang and were not merely showing off their artistry.
May there be more saints and more dignified ceremonies as the one I attended. May it dawn on ecclesiastical authorities that the best way to combat paedophilia by priests is to abolish compulsory celibacy and to hand over paedophile priest to civilian authorities. It is a crime and must be judged as such not by sweeping the sin under the carpet as has been done so far.
To be fair, paedophilia is not limited to priests, nuns, seminaries and novitiates. We, in Goa, had the case of Freddy Peats. I was then an official jail visitor and realised that on the pretext that they were averse to loud noise every cell had been provided with a radio set, and later, a TV set, by way of an amenity. Peats and his colleagues got his cell allotted to himself. They had discovered a young jail mate, hailing from Kerala with homosexual propensities and wanted to be left to themselves. They took turns with the young man and compensated them for the services rendered by him from the money they were entitled to from the legitimate salary as artisans, in the kitchen, the carpentry shop, etc.
In 2000 or so, it was discovered in Lisbon that Casa Pias, an orphanage, till then one of the most respectable public institutions, was being used by high ranking pederasts in collusion with the matron who is still under trial and recently appeared on the TV wearing a head-to-foot black hood. TV personalities like Carlos Cruz who had a huge following in his talk shows, who to all appearances was a respectable man, married to a woman of high society with whom he has children, on the quite was abusing orphaned casapianos until some of them revolted, broke their well kept secret and perhaps well compensated silence and all hell broke loose. Cruz and other vitiated were bailed out but judicially ordered to wear 24 hours an electronic bracelet so that all their movements could be traced. Some of them were sentenced last month and citizens were aghast at the light sentences they were awarded. They were prospective, the state justified, and the time spent on house arrest ought to be considered as sufficient, but nevertheless the sentences were just six months or so of simple imprisonment.
Some of the victims of Cruz and others, and their widowed mothers, were shown on TV narrating how they were seduced – if that is the right word – and abused. Some of the women the pederasts were married to or living with, at first vociferously defended their men, they just could not believe the crime they had been charged with until the truth sank in and they either divorced or broke their partnerships.
Only a sick man could risk so much for so little. But the psychiatrists who opined on the matter explained that it was an incurable sickness - unfortunately, for them and the society at large. Another TV and theatre personality, Herman Zap (José one of richest men of Portugal and who lived in a palatial house) was also raided but not arrested. He admitted to being a homosexual, but the boys he had seduced were all majors. And he got away with it. Ministers and top politicians were mentioned and arrested except for one top political leader of the then ruling party, a socialist of ex-president Mário Soares faction, got away with it – honourably if one may add.
