The Colombian Catholic Church will apologize to the victims of pedophilia that occurred in the country, announced This Thursday the Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference of Colombia (CEC), Monsignor Luis Manuel Alí.
The determination was adopted by the bishops gathered in the Assembly of the Episcopal Conference of Colombia that takes place in Bogotá.
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“It is necessary to make the gestures of forgiveness concrete, and in each of the cases and of the situations a comprehensive reparation for the victim”, said the bishop.
The mitrado affirmed that they will look for a specific day to carry out the act of forgiveness. “We are looking for the most propitious day that can be of Lent or it can be a Stations of the Cross or the Day of the Victims, November 18, we still need to specify the day.”
The measure is in the primer called “The culture of care”, which indicates theThe route that will be followed to treat priests investigated for sexual abuse or pedophilia.
The senior hierarch explained that “any complaint filed, the priest is separated (from his functions in the Church)” and added that if the ordinary justice entity says that he must go to jail, “he will go to jail”.
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In Colombia, sexual abuse by members of the Church continues to be a taboo and persecution It is limited, despite the fact that in 2019 it recognized more than a hundred cases committed by priests.
The journalist Juan Pablo Barrientos, who has studied these types of cases in depth, calculates that, despite the fact that it would only be possible to find out if the secret archives of the Church were made public, among 20 and 30% of priests in Colombia have complaints of sexual abuse of children and adolescents.
