Brazil – A Brazilian priest mentioned in the Catholic clergy sex abuse film “Spotlight” was found dead in a prison cell after he was arrested again for suspected pedophilia, authorities said on Monday.
Father Bonifacio Buzzi, 57, hanged himself with a sheet in a jail in the state of Minas Gerais where he was taken after his arrest on Friday, the state government said in a statement.
A decade ago Buzzi was convicted of abusing a 10-year-old boy in Mariana, Minas Gerais and jailed from 2007 to 2015. He was arrested last week following criminal complaints that he had molested two boys aged 9 and 13.
Buzzi was cited among the pedophilia cases listed at the end of “Spotlight,” the Oscar-winning 2015 film based on the Boston Globe newspaper’s investigation of sexual abuses by Catholic priests and efforts by the Boston Archdiocese to cover them up.
Allegations against Buzzi first emerged in the 1990s in his home state of Santa Catarina. In 1995 he was convicted of molesting two boys in his parish near Mariana after their parents accused him of performing oral sex on their children.
Buzzi got a reduced sentence and the Catholic Church obtained a court order allowing him to serve it out at the home of the local archbishop.
A 95-year-old Catholic priest admitted to sexually abusing boys decades ago on Guam. He said he confessed his sins to other priests on the island at the time but none told him to specifically stop.
Instead, the Rev. Louis Brouillard said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Saturday morning that the other priests told him to “do better” along with regular penance, such as saying Hail Mary prayers.
Brouillard served in Guam from the 1940s through the 1970s, teaching at San Vicente and Father Duenas Memorial schools while he was a priest. He said he molested “a couple of boys” during that time.
However, when pressed on how many boys he might have abused, Brouillard said: “I have no idea. Maybe 20.”
“At that time, when I was that age, I got the impression that kids liked it, so I went ahead. But now of course, I know it’s wrong and I’m paying for it,” Brouillard said.
Leo B. Tudela, 73, emotionally testified about what he said was abuse by Brouillard in the mid-1950s during a hearing this week in the Guam Legislature. Tudela urged senators to support legislation that would lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits against those who sexually abused children. It’s now two years.
Brouillard said he didn’t remember Tudela.
Brouillard’s admissions come after three former altar boys and the mother of another filed a $2 million libel and slander lawsuit against former Guam Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron and the archdiocese, saying they were called liars when they raised allegations that Apuron sexually abused boys in the 1970s.
Apuron has denied the abuse and not been charged with any crime. The Vatican appointed Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai as a temporary administrator after the allegations surfaced.
After the allegations against Brouillard were first reported by the Pacific Daily News this week, Hon released a statement: “With the news that Father Louis Brouillard, a priest who served on Guam confessed to having abused altar boys on Guam in the 1950s, I convey my deepest apologies and that of the entire church to Mr. Leo Tudela and all other persons who were also victimized.”
Hon also directed church investigators to speak with Tudela and others who have raised allegations of sexual abuse.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they are victims of sex abuse, but Tudela gave his testimony at a public hearing.
Brouillard said he hasn’t been defrocked, and lives in Pine City, Minnesota, on a small pension from the church in Guam. He said he has volunteered with the local Meals on Wheels program for 30 years as atonement.
He said he never sought to silence his victims, and he offers daily prayers to the boys he molested.
“I regret with all my heart that I did anything wrong to them,” he said. “I am praying for the boys and hope that they can forgive me and that God can.”
In recent years, the Vatican released its records of sexual abuse punishment, revealing an alarming 3,400 cases since 2004. Of course, these are only the offenders who were caught. The actual number of abusers and victims remains unknown, often leading the victims to depression, addiction, and suicidal thoughts.
Children who suffer from any form of abuse have a much greater risk for addiction, and with such startling revelations brought to light in recent months, it’s a good idea for every family to be aware of helpful steps to take to minimize the negative consequences if abuse has occurred in any situation. If you suspect a child has been abused or know a child who has been victimized by a clergy member or any trusted adult, here are a few ways to help the child cope and reduce the risk of suicide.
Seek Therapy
Overcoming something as traumatic as sexual abuse, particularly by a trusted individual like clergy members, is not something easily done. Victims of abuse need counseling with a trained professional, preferably one with experience with this brand of abuse. It will take extensive knowledge of the human mind, trauma, and how it affects a person as they age to mitigate the negative effects of the abuse.
Common results of childhood trauma are mistrust of adults, increased risk of addiction and suicide, PTSD, and depression. A good treatment program has the potential to eliminate many of these consequences.
Monitor Addictive Substance Use
If you know a child or an adult who has been sexually abused by a clergy member – or abused in any circumstance by a trusted adult, recently or in the past, it is important to observe their use of substances like alcohol, nicotine, prescription drugs, or illicit drugs. The risk of a childhood abuse victim becoming an addict is much higher than their peers, meaning at the first sign of overuse, help is needed. What’s more, these risks exist even decades after abuse has occurred, with some victims turning to drugs or alcohol later in life.
Offer Healthy Outlets
The reason addiction and suicide are so common in childhood abuse victims is the need to escape from the trauma. Victims use substances or more drastic measures to forget about the abuse they suffered and rid themselves of the effects of that abuse. With this in mind, it is important to provide healthy outlets for beneficial forms of escapism and healing.
Some good options include yoga, meditation, and gardening. Yoga combines the benefits of exercise (endorphins, physical wellbeing) with the mental benefits of a meditative practice (silencing the mind). Meditation offers similar benefits with more focus on relaxation and serenity.
Gardening has been shown to be extremely beneficial in many ways. By tending to plants, people feel useful and excited when their plants flourish.
Preventing suicide in abuse victims can be a complex task. It should not be taken on by loved ones alone but rather should be undertaken with the assistance of a therapist. The love and support of family can mean the world but even the most supportive family cannot always undo the emotional damage that has been done. Let the counselor work on the mental side while you and your other loved ones focus on positive outlets and prevention of addiction.
*Jennifer McGregor
has wanted to be a doctor since she was little. Now, as a pre-med student, she’s well on her way to achieving that dream. She helped create PublicHealthLibrary.org with a friend as part of a class project. With it, she hopes to provide access to trustworthy health and medical resources. When Jennifer isn’t working on the site, you can usually find her hitting the books in the campus library or spending some downtime with her dog at the local park.
To put this issue in the proper historical perspective, let me disclose something about the editorial policies of Catholic World News. When I first began the service, back in 1996, I treated any credible report of clerical abuse as an important story, and a lawsuit against a Catholic diocese was top-headline material. Twenty years later, new charges of priestly abuse and new lawsuits against Catholic dioceses have become so commonplace that they barely merit a mention. Even diocesan bankruptcy filings and multi-million-dollar settlements, and the parish closings that follow, command only a quick story at the bottom of our daily headline menu. The editorial bar is now set much higher at CWN; only the most sensational stories receive top billing. But it is important to bear in mind that the lesser revelations—the stories that might have generated shocking headlines in 1996—keep dribbling out, week after week. The massive hemorrhage of episcopal credibility occurred in 2002, but since that time the bleeding has never entirely stopped.
This week’s revelation breaks new ground because for the first time, critics of the Church have solid “smoking gun” evidence that the Vatican—or at least someone fully authorized to represent the Vatican in the US—smothered an inquiry into a prelate’s behavior. Since Archbishop Vigano was acting on behalf of the Holy See, it is not unreasonable to assume that senior Vatican officials approved of his action, and perhaps even ordered it. So this case raises new questions about the commitment of the Vatican to root out corruption in the episcopate. Nor can those questions be finessed by saying that Pope Francis has brought a new dedication to the cause of reform; this case arose in 2014, during the current pontificate.
Read only a few of the documents made public yesterday in Minnesota, and you are forced toward one of two possible conclusions. Either Archbishop John Nienstedt was guilty of gross misconduct, and unfit for his office; or he was the target of a organized campaign of slander, designed to silence his opposition to the gay-rights movement. One way or another, the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis was (or is) in grave danger. Wasn’t it imperative to know the facts, fully understand the problem, and excise the cancer?
Don’t the faithful the right to know what has happened, to cause so much distress within the Church they love? If Archbishop Nienstedt is guilty, he should be denounced—not allowed to negotiate a quiet withdrawal and then treated with the respect customarily accorded to a retired prelate. If he has been unjustly accused, then the slanderers should be exposed and denounced; the archbishop should stay and his accusers should go. Instead the former nuncio arranged a solution that has left everyone with questions and doubts.
Questions and doubts: these are the enemies of credibility. Important as it is to establish the guilt or innocence of Archbishop John Nienstedt, for my present purposes it is more important that the papal nuncio chose to set a higher priority on public appearances than on exposing the truth. Evidently he thought that he could avoid a broader scandal by negotiating the early exit of Archbishop Nienstedt. But of course he did not avoid the broader scandal; he only postponed and enlarged it. How many lessons will be needed before the point finally sinks in: the cover-up is worse than the crime!
The Catholic hierarchy—and yes, that includes the Vatican—cannot regain public trust without demonstrating a willingness to pursue and expose the truth about clerical misconduct. New policies and procedures will never erase doubts, unless they are implemented by Church leaders in whom the public has complete confidence. And the public will not, and should not, place that sort of trust in leaders who slough off the critical questions, and place all their trust on the lawyerly multiplication of policies and procedures.
Another personal story: Back in the early 1990s, as the first stories of clerical abuse began to crop up in the news, a Catholic radio-show host asked me how important the story was—fully expecting, I’m sure, that I would say the reports had been overblown. I replied instead that I feared this would be the greatest crisis for Catholicism since the Reformation.
The Reformation was a response to real abuses within the Catholic Church, and the Council of Trent eventually moved to end those abuses. The sex-abuse problem has laid bare another scandal: the existence of a complacent clerical culture, protected by a complacent episcopate, unresponsive to the needs of the laity. The only way to eliminate the scandal entirely is by a thorough reform of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately, as a group the clergy—bishops included—have not yet recognized the need for that reform.
Jeff Anderson, a lawyer for victims of clergy abuse, with a photo of Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Update:This article has been revised to include a response from the Vatican that was received after the article’s initial publication.<
The Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States quashed an independent investigation in 2014 into sexual and possible criminal misconduct by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis and ordered church officials to destroy a letter they wrote to him protesting the decision, according to a memo made public on Wednesday.
The detailed memo was written by an outraged priest, the Rev. Dan Griffith, who was working in the top ranks of the archdiocese and was the liaison to the lawyers conducting the inquiry. He wrote that the ambassador’s order to call off the investigation and destroy evidence amounted to “a good old fashioned cover-up to preserve power and avoid scandal.”
The document offers a grave indictment of the conduct of the Vatican’s ambassador, and will probably put pressure on Pope Francis to discipline him and Archbishop Nienstedt. The former ambassador, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, served as Pope Francis’ representative to the church until he retired in April.
With sexual abuse victims clamoring for Francis to take action against negligent bishops, the pope recently announced that an array of Vatican departments should keep bishops accountable.
“All roads of concealment and cover-up lead to Rome,” said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer who represents 350 suspected victims of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul. He spoke at a news conference on Wednesday in which he made the memo public.
This memo, and many other documents, were made public Wednesday as the result of a legal agreement between the archdiocese and the Ramsey County attorney, John Choi.
Mr. Choi agreed to dismiss the criminal case against the archdiocese in exchange for its admission that it failed to protect three children from sexual abuse by a priest, Curtis Wehmeyer. The archdiocese and the county attorney had reached a civil settlement in December, but on Wednesday it was amended to say, “The Archdiocese failed to keep the safety and well-being of these three children ahead of protecting the interests of Curtis Wehmeyer and the Archdiocese.”
Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda, who replaced Archbishop Nienstedt last year, apologized in a letter on Wednesday, and said: “I know that words alone are not enough. We must do better.”
The archdiocese agreed to an additional year of oversight of its child protection efforts by the county attorney’s office and the court, until the year 2020.
Curtis Wehmeyer, a former priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, pleaded guilty in 2012 to molesting two children. Credit
In 2012, Father Wehmeyer pleaded guilty to child molestation and possessing child pornography, and it later emerged that diocesan officials had known for years of concerns about his sexual conduct. But he was not only retained, he was promoted, in 2009, to pastor of a parish.
The case brought new scrutiny to the archdiocese and prompted other people to come forward with abuse allegations. And it led indirectly to the archdiocese’s commissioning an inquiry of its own leader, Archbishop Nienstedt.
Father Griffith’s startlingly frank 11-page memo on the history of that investigation was addressed to two bishops in the diocese: Lee A. Piché and Andrew H. Cozzens. In a brief statement released Wednesday, Father Griffith said: “My memo speaks for itself. I stand by it.” He also said he had confidence in Archbishop Hebda.
The memo states that after the investigation uncovered embarrassing evidence about the archbishop, the pope’s representative in Washington ordered it cut short. It says that when bishops sent a letter objecting to that decision, the nuncio told them to destroy the letter. Father Griffith said in his memo that “destruction of evidence is a crime under federal law and state law.”
In February 2014, the archdiocese hired an outside law firm, Greene Espel, to investigate Archbishop Nienstedt. The existence of the investigation did not become public until July 2014, after it ended, and the memo was written a few days later.
The purpose of the inquiry, the memo said, was to investigate allegations of sex and sexual harassment by the archbishop, primarily with other priests or seminarians. But it was also to look into what the memo depicts as a close relationship with Father Wehmeyer, “which may have affected his judgment regarding Wehmeyer’s past misconduct.”
“Given the significant judgment errors in the Wehmeyer case, I believed this to be one of the most serious issues of the investigation, a conclusion also reached by our investigators,” the memo says.
The Greene Espel lawyers took affidavits from 11 credible witnesses who had known the archbishop, the memo said, containing evidence of “sexual misconduct; sexual harassment; reprisals in response to the rejection of unwelcome advances.” The lawyers “stated they had at least 24 more leads to pursue.”
The memo also said that many of the witnesses mentioned that Archbishop Nienstedt may have had sexual relations with a Swiss Guardsman in Rome.
Efforts to reach Archbishop Nienstedt were unsuccessful.
Bishops Piché and Cozzens, with Archbishop Nienstedt, traveled to Washington in April 2014 to discuss the initial findings with the papal nuncio, Archbishop Viganò. The memo offers the first account of what took place in that meeting to be made public, albeit secondhand, because the memo’s author was not present. The nuncio “ordered you to have the lawyers quickly interview Archbishop Nienstedt and wrap up the investigation,” it says. “The nuncio said that the lawyers were not to pursue any further leads.”
A spokesman for the Vatican, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in an interview on Thursday, “This is a very complex issue and we need more information before we can make any comment.”
Father Lombardi said it was too soon to know whether the new Vatican protocols for judging bishops accused of negligence would apply to Archbishops Viganò or Nienstedt.
