Latin America church leaders reacting cautiously, if at all, to sex abuse scandal rocking the Vatican

Latin America church treads softly
Few of the region's top Catholic clerics have addressed the sex abuse scandal assailing the Vatican.

Reporting from Mexico City - In Latin America, home to nearly half the world's Catholics, church leaders are reacting cautiously, if at all, to the sex abuse scandal rocking the Vatican.

Few of the region's top clerics have spoken out since allegations of pedophilia and other crimes committed by priests in Europe and the United States began stacking up at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI. Many, not surprisingly, have leaped to the pope's defense.

Mexico's primate, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, broke his silence during Holy Week ceremonies, warning that pedophile priests would be punished.
"I warn you, my priests, that if someone commits these abominable acts, neither I nor the archdioceses will defend or tolerate the criminal," he said during Maundy Thursday Mass at the Mexico City Cathedral. "We do not enjoy, nor should we, any form of [legal] privilege."

The Mexican newspaper Reforma reported Rivera's comments under the headline "The Cardinal -- Finally -- Condemns Pederasts."

Rivera has come under criticism for his unflagging support of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the deceased and discredited founder of the influential Legion of Christ order. The Mexican-born Maciel was accused for decades of molesting seminarians and boys, but only since his death has the church, begrudgingly, accepted that the allegations were true. Maciel's victims say they brought his misdeeds to Rivera's attention as early as 1997.

A small group of people protests nearly every Sunday outside the cathedral, including Palm Sunday, when they shouted "Cover-up!" as Rivera offered blessings from a church balcony.

Roman Catholicism is planted deeply in Latin American culture. Most Latin Americans grew up in the church, and the hierarchy is generally quite conservative, thanks in part to efforts by the Vatican under the late Pope John Paul II to displace leftist priests. Consequently, devout Catholics in Latin America are more willing to accept the Vatican's defense of its handling of the abuse crisis.

The Latin American Bishops Conference, in a statement published Friday, expressed solidarity with the pope and lashed out at the "baseless" and "calumnious" news reports -- mostly in the U.S. -- that suggest Benedict was an accomplice in covering up rape and other crimes by priests.

Some experts on the Vatican are predicting that the sex abuse scandal will spread through Latin America. The region has already seen a number of cases, with that of Maciel being perhaps the most egregious.

In Brazil, the world's most populous Catholic country, three priests are under police investigation, suspected of having had sex with altar boys and other children and teens for years. The priests have been suspended from church duty. Brazilian Bishop Valerio Breda said in a statement that the church was cooperating with police.

A Spanish priest working in Chile was convicted March 24 of possessing child pornography and sentenced to more than two years in prison. Spanish news reports said that the priest, Jose Angel Arregui, will be extradited to Spain to face trial for the alleged abuse of at least 15 minors.

"It is true that there are painful episodes which we absolutely condemn," Msgr. Alejandro Goic of Chile told a radio interviewer this week. "We cannot hide these crimes. The only way to heal these terrible dramas is to be transparent, and we have to be more so each and every day."

Mexico's Rivera and other clerics, in the same breath that they acknowledge and condemn abuse, criticize what Hugo Barrantes, the archbishop of San Jose, Costa Rica, called an "anti-Catholic media campaign" against the pope and the church.

In that, they were taking their cue from Rome, where on Friday the preacher of the papal household, in his Good Friday sermon, compared the criticisms of Benedict to the "collective violence" that Jews have suffered through history. The attacks resemble "the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," Father Raniero Cantalamessa said, quoting from what he said was a letter from a Jewish friend.

The pope's spokesman later attempted to distance the Vatican from the remarks, the Associated Press reported from Rome.