Reports of priests raping or abusing minors have now emerged in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico and Chile causing growing anger in the continent.
In Brazil an 83-year-old priest was arrested after he was secretly filmed in bed with a 19-year-old altar boy. The footage was broadcast on national television which led to the arrest of Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa and two other priests in the state of Alagoas who are accused of abusing boys as young as 12 yrs-old.
The Catholic Church in Chile confirmed this week that there have been 20 alleged or confirmed cases of child abuse by priests.
In Uruguay, a priest charged with raping three children in Bolivia had returned to his homeland and was living openly with full knowledge of local church officials.
Juan Jose Santana has been on the run from Bolivian authorities since May 2008. Asked if allegations that he had abused children were true, Santana said, "It's true. That's all I can say... You know something? I'm dead."
In Mexico, The Legionnaires of Christ, a shadowy but powerful Catholic sect founded by Maciel Degollado. It emerged that the staunchly conservative theologian had a series of sexual affairs with MEN, women and BOYS in many different parts of the world.
The Mexican church has also been drawn into a legal battle in the United States. A Mexican citizen is suing Catholic cardinals in Mexico City and Los Angeles, accusing them of purposely hiding the background of a Mexican priest accused of sexually abusing dozens of children.
this is not new
so long where there is christanity, there will be accounts of sex abuse
About damm time this whole thing comes to light
'Why I kept silent'
DUBLIN - ONE of the first whistleblowers in the clerical abuse scandal which has shaken the Catholic Church in Ireland to its foundations can still recall the fear that stalked his wretched childhood.
Sent to a Church-run school at the age of four, Paddy Doyle was severely abused. It was not until he was 38 that he was able to open up about the horrors he had suffered.
'For saying anything at all, you would be seriously punished,' he recalls in an AFP interview, when asked why the systematic abuse meted out across the predominantly Catholic country was allowed to continue unchecked for so long.
When his mother died of cancer and his father hanged himself in front of him and his two-year-old sister, the Irish justice system in 1955 labelled him as 'not being in possession of a proper guardian'.
He was sent to the now notorious St Michael's Industrial School, at Cappoquin, County Waterford, south-east Ireland, where he was viciously assaulted and sexually abused.
'They were very serious abusers. We couldn't even dream of speaking out. You could be deprived of food, of any kind of social interaction with other children.
'So you just went with the way things were. All the children were under the age of 10, so it was very difficult.' - AFP
too many such stories...........you can read till your eyes fall out.............
i recall reading about thousands of British orphans sent to Australian church-run schools after 2nd World War...........
they were subjected to physical beatings, sexual abuses................they were given little to none education and were forced into child labour akin to slavery...............
with priests like those on Earth, why bother going to heaven ???...................i'm better off taking my chances with the devil in hell............LOL