A CATHOLIC priest in Brazil who became an unlikely porn-star at the age of 82 after he was secretly filmed having it off with a former altar boy, aged 19, is now being held in custody while officials investigate allegations that he had abused boys as young as 12.
The allegations against Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa – and two other Brazilian priests – have made headlines throughout the world’s most populous Catholic nation and come amid accusations of sexual abuse by priests across the world.
The scandal, according to this report, erupted when Brazilian television network SBT last month broadcast a tape of Barbosa in bed with a 19-year-old that was widely distributed on the internet.
The station said the video was secretly filmed in January 2009 and sent anonymously to the network. It was not clear if the 19-year-old, identified as a former altar boy who had worked with Barbosa for four years, had previous sexual relations with the priest.
SBT reporters went to Barbosa’s house and confronted him. Asked if he ever abused boys, Barbosa said he could only answer such a question “in confession” and cut off the interview.
Brazil’s legislature launched a sex abuse investigation, which produced allegations Barbosa molested boys. The elderly priest was detained late Sunday.
Judge Romulo Vasconcelos told Globo TV on Monday that he requested Barbosa’s immediate detention out of fear the priest would flee the country.
The case now goes to prosecutors, who will decide whether to file child abuse charges.
Sen Magno Malta, the Brazilian lawmaker leading the legislature’s probe, called Barbosa’s detention a milestone in the fight against child abuse in Brazil.
Barbosa’s lawyer, Edson Maia, plans to seek his release from detention, citing the man’s advanced age and arguing that he has a fixed address and does not pose a flight risk.
Congressional investigators said more than 20 witnesses were called and some testified Barbosa and two other priests in the same north-eastern archdiocese had abused boys as young as 12, plying them with money, clothes and other gifts.
Bishop Valerio Breda of the Penedo archdiocese in the north-eastern state of Alagoas said recently that all three priests had been suspended and that the church was conducting its own investigation.
Barbosa told investigators that “he is not a paedophile,” but after three former altar boys testified he had abused them, he asked for forgiveness, said Renato Paoliello, a spokesman for Malta.
Latin Americans priests have faced a cascade of accusations of abuse of minors recently.
Just this month, church officials in Uruguay confirmed they had not revealed the whereabouts to police of a defrocked priest who fled home to his family in Uruguay after a nun accused him of raping three children in Bolivia. And a priest in Chile was charged with eight cases of sexually abusing minors, including a girl he had fathered.
A Mexican woman charged in March that the deceased, scandal-tainted founder of a conservative Catholic religious order abused one of the two sons she said he fathered with her. The Legionaries of Christ, the order founded by the Rev Marcial Maciel, acknowledged earlier in a separate case that Maciel had molested seminarians.
In a report last week, The Associated Press detailed how its reporters around the globe had found 30 cases of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad by the church and some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in other countries, and some abused again. The probe spanned 21 nations across six continents.
Closer to home, a former Roman Catholic priest convicted of child pornography offences has appeared before magistrates accused of breaching a court order.
Barnaby Dowling, former priest of St Osmund’s Church, Salisbury, was given a sexual offences prevention order by magistrates in 2006.
He had admitted downloading 116 indecent images of children.
He appeared last week before Bristol magistrates accused of visiting four churches in the Salisbury area.
The case against him was adjourned until 24 May for a plea hearing.
He is alleged to have visited the churches between April 2009 and January this year.
Hat tip: Name Withheld and BarrieJohn
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
April 20th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
I like to think of myself as someone who advocates peace, respect and tolerance whenever and wherever I can, and I cannot abide people who are filled with hate.
But you know what, I’d gladly string these fuckers up myself.
April 20th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I wonder who will get the blame this time?
Seriously, I wonder if the pathetic excuses both from the RCC themselves and their apologists might be the thing that actually brings the faithful to their senses. Not the arguments of those that, quite rightly, criticise the RCC for its many sins, for they are the enemy and can be villified or just ignored. Not so the continual, awful attempts to lay the blame for these crimes absolutely anywhere apart from where it really lies.
April 20th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Erm the rules are clear. Paedophilia in the Priesthood is primarily the fault of homosexuality. And to some extent the Jews, secularism and pornography. But all those 14 year old boys who were raped by Priests were because one of the two was gay .That is the lie the cult sorry church has been putting out all week. Surely this Bishop must get the same treatment as Joseph Goebells when he married a protestant and be ex-communicated
April 20th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
But we mustn’t condemn the whole organization just because of one or two rotten apples, surely?*
(*Irony!)
April 20th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Could the same argument be used about the BNP, The KKK or the Nazis
April 20th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Not a flight risk? Hmm, well maybe the Vatican might be a <little more circumspect at the moment, but in general terms priestly paedophiles just need to touch base to get oly oly oxen free. In the Vatican or somewhere safe. I gather Alaska was popular for the really indiscreet.
April 20th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Ah yes Don, Alaska, the paedophile’s paradise. Read this and reach for the blood pressure pills:
http://www.thestranger.com/sea.....id=1065017
April 20th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
As a mater of interest do people consider Islam of Catholicism to be the bigger threat Western secular democracy at the moment? They seem to be all we are hearing about just now. Or another maybe another perhaps evangelicals or Mormons perhaps or even the crazy settler Jews in Israel
April 20th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
I’m lost for words. The regularity with which these atrocities are exposed has drained my vocabulary.
April 20th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Alan, to paraphrase Rowan Atkinson: Religion is like a dung heap with islam being the biggest weed growing from it.
Barry, I followed your link – speechless! Alaska: that’s fundie nutter Sarah Palin country isn’t it.
April 20th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Dear me, not again. Here is my confident forecast. 1. You will hear little,if anything, of this in the UK and probably nothing on BBC headed by a devout RC. I regard the BBC with deepening suspicion since they decided, by dictat, that the vacuous Thought for the Day would not include secular contributions. That, dear reader, is censorship, i.e. no free speech on the BBC.
2. The Pope, a contemptible scoundrel, is still being welcomed to the UK – £20 million of your taxes to fund his State Visit – because no politician has the courage to say, “We don’t want you. You are a disgrace. You stain us by your presence.”
3. There will be riots if he dares to come here but they will be suppressed by our police on the orders of politicians.
How much longer are we prepared to allow this?
April 20th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Agreed except for No 3.
April 20th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Broadsword said:
“I’m lost for words. The regularity with which these atrocities are exposed has drained my vocabulary.”
Indeed. I spend my time pulling my lower jaw off the floor, and pushing my eyeballs back into my head. Has there really been a word invented that expresses this scope of criminal hypocrisy??? All the while bashing on non-believers as condemned apostates. Sitting on the other side of a screen, listening to confessions from someone tortured in his soul because he shot the neighbor’s cat with a BB gun, doling out “hail mary’s” while he jacks off thinking about fondling a choir boy. Let me quote from their spirit guide:
Colossians 3:5 (New International Version)
“5Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”
And these bastards claim to be our guides to this spiritual enlightenment.
And flight risk? Remember that Yosef Mengele (Nazi Doctor Death) died of old age in Argentina after the Vatican used their autonomy to smuggle him out of Europe.
No bail, no mercy.
NeoWolfe
April 21st, 2010 at 6:42 am
@Alan,
As to the bigger threat-
I don’t think that there’s much to choose between all those collective delusions,they’re all equally dangerous to liberty and to the health of dissenters. We’re still fighting the same battle as HenryII and Beckett,unfortunately.
April 21st, 2010 at 7:09 am
There’s even a game now where Benedict has to move priests.
http://www.kill5.com/game.php?id=vatican_city
You could argue it a poor topic for “fun”. To me it’s yet another weapon to ridicule Ratzi’s Paedhood.