IN WHAT may prove to be a landmark judgment, a Rome court on Thursday
imposed a 15-year prison sentence on Don Ruggero Conti, a Rome-based
priest convicted of having abused seven boys in his Selva Candida parish
near the capital.
Via Boston, then Dublin then Munich and now the
Roman ring road, the scourge of clerical sex abuse appears to move ever
closer to the Holy See itself.
Lawyers for Don Ruggero confirmed
they will appeal Thursday’s verdict, while Don Ruggero remains free
until a definitive “third level” of judgment has been passed against
him. After the court verdict, he returned to the Roman old people’s home
where he has lived for the last two years.
In an interview with
The Irish Times yesterday, Roberto Mirabile, president of
anti-paedophile advocacy group La Caramella Buona which legally assisted
Don Ruggero’s victims, accused the Holy See and the Italian Catholic
Church of adopting an attitude of omertà (silence) and of “not wanting
to know” with regard to cases of clerical sex abuse in Italy.
Mr
Mirabile recalled how La Caramella Buona had taken details of the
accusations against Don Ruggero to the Vatican’s chief prosecutor, Msgr
Charles Scicluna, in July 2007.
The Vatican official, however,
said he had no information about the priest, inviting La Caramella Buona
to continue the legal action itself. Don Ruggero was arrested almost a
year later, in June 2008, but police surveillance showed he continued to
abuse minors until March 2008 – nine months after the Vatican was
alerted.
Mr Mirabile argues that had a senior Vatican figure
intervened immediately, other crimes of sexual abuse of minors might
have been avoided.
Msgr Scicluna told Spanish daily
El Pais that La Caramella Buona was not able to provide full documentation, including “signed statements”.
Mr
Mirabile yesterday rejected that assessment.
He said his association
would now try to bring a case against Don Ruggero’s bishop, Gino Reali,
accusing him of aiding and abetting the crimes.
Vatican commentators
suggest it will be difficult to have Bishop Reali charged, given the
deferential attitude of the Italian state to the church.