Pedophile priest scandals sweeping Catholic churches around Europe have encouraged more and more victims to speak out, fuelling a storm that now threatens to break over Italy."Victims' groups will grow exponentially in the next few weeks," predicted Italian anti-pedophilia activist Roberto Mirabile.
Fresh Catholic Church investigations in the northern cities of Bolzano and Verona could expose new cases of predatory clergy in Italy, which counts more than 50,000 priests, the highest concentration in the world.
And on Friday, the left-leaning Italian weekly L'Espresso published new allegations of child molestation by a monk in Tuscany and by a nun in the northern region of Lombardy.
In an echo of the scandal that rocked the Irish Catholic Church in November, L'Espresso noted that the bishops overseeing the two dioceses were aware of the abuses and covered up the allegations.
"The Italian Church is worried and moving to address what might break out in Italy," Mirabile, head of the anti-pedophilia group La Caramella Buona, told AFP.
The Italian Church declined to comment, but Charles Scicluna, the chief Vatican investigator for sex crimes, set the tone in a recent interview with Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference.
"So far, the phenomenon does not seem to be of dramatic proportions, though I am worried by a certain culture of silence that is still too widespread" in Italy, he said.
In Bolzano, revelations of abuse emerged in the local press earlier this month, and the diocese is meeting with victims who have come forward, said spokesman Martin Pezzei.
The Bolzano bishop publicly asked for forgiveness and urged victims to contact the diocese, saying in a statement that in so doing he was dispelling "the impression that the Church wants to hush up or hide something."
Pezzei said more victims came forward after the apology, but declined to offer figures.
Earlier this month, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, responsible for sex abuse investigations, asked the Verona diocese to reopen a probe into abuse allegations.
This time, investigators will interview victims, unlike in the earlier probe, which was prompted by a January 2009 expose by L'Espresso.
Victims allege that employees of a Catholic institute for the deaf abused 67 children from the 1950s until 1984 — a figure disputed by diocesan spokesman Bruno Fasani.
"As far as we know, that is an unreliable figure," Fasani told AFP.
Three of the Verona victims were to appear on an Italian public television broadcast late Friday, stressing the parallel with the case of a priest at the centre of a New York Times expose on Thursday.
Reverend Lawrence Murphy of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was accused of abusing up to 200 deaf children.
Mirabile believes the recent string of scandals, along with Pope Benedict XVI's pastoral letter on pedophilia crimes in Ireland issued on Saturday, will embolden other victims to come forward and speak out.
"The Holy Father's letter has certainly given an input in terms of courage" said father Fortunato di Noto, a Sicilian priest whose Meter association fights pedophilia and child pornography.
Since the Irish cases emerged, abuse scandals have come to light in the pope's native Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
L'Espresso on Friday listed dozens of religious figures in Italy who were prosecuted for sexual abuse or for possession of child pornography, saying that "the front is widening."
But so far in Italy, no priest child abuse case has captured the national spotlight.
Mirabile said Italians' "attachment and devotion" to the Catholic Church is "much stronger" than in other countries.
"The fact that we have the Vatican in Rome counts for something," he added.
Activists also fault the Italian government for failing to address the crimes.
"The difference with Ireland and Germany is that in these countries governments intervened on these cases. Not here," said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for Verona's deaf victims.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Monday congratulated the pope for his "humility and sincerity" in the letter to Irish Catholics.
Victims' groups will "have this inherent handicap because they will never really feel supported by institutions. It's a shame," Mirabile said.
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