The Local: Italy’s News in English
Published: 07 Apr 2014 16:15 GMT+02:00
Updated: 07 Apr 2014 16:15 GMT+02:00
A priest from Feltre, a hillside town in the northern Italian province of Belluno, is under investigation for allegedly paying a Moroccan man for sex.
The priest, who was immediately dismissed by the bishop of the diocese as the scandal surfaced, but for “health reasons”, allegedly used money from a nearby convent to pay for sex with the young Moroccan, Il Gazzettino reported.
The investigation comes on the same day another priest, Father Giovanni Desio, was arrested for “sexual activity with minors”, the newspaper said. The abuse is reported to have taken place in the priests’ house in Casalborsetti, a hamlet in Ravenna.
Father Desio also drove his SUV into a river in February while being four times over the alcohol limit.
Several other accusations of child abuse by priests have hit Italy this year.
In February, a priest from Agordino, another small town in Belluno, was accused of sexually abusing ten girls.
Meanwhile, earlier this year a priest in Sicily was sentenced to a year in jail for paying children for sexual acts.
For more than a decade, the Catholic Church has been rocked by a cascade of paedophilia scandals, with victims describing the trauma of abuse at the hands of people charged with their care.
A UN committee in February denounced the Church for its secretive handling of child abuse accusations and for failing to stamp out predatory priests, and urged it to hand over known and suspected abusers for prosecution.
Pope Francis hit back in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera earlier this month, saying the Church had “acted with transparency and accountability” in its handling of the scourge.
The pope also set up a commission, which includes a former child abuse victim, last year in a bid to root out paedophilia.
Despite his recognition of abuse as “the shame of the Church”, American victim association SNAP has blasted the pope’s “archaic and defensive mentality” and accused him of “doing nothing, literally nothing” to protect children.
The Vatican says it continues to receive around 600 claims of alleged abuse by priests every year, many dating back to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.