The Colombian Catholic Church: cover-up, scandals and intolerance
This is an article which didn’t make it at The Canadian
As in every Spanish-speaking country, the Catholic Church still holds a lot of power in society, no matter if Catholicism is no longer the "official religion". It does not mean that society still believes everything the Church states, though it is still trusted by public, institutionally speaking.
Recent controversies have put the power of the Church to the test in Colombia. In May 2006, the Constitutional Court lifted partially the ban on abortion in three specific cases, after a controversy that took more than a year, where the clergy failed to convince the public that abortion was a murder, no matter the circumstance. The reaction of the Church to the ruling was to excommunicate the judges who voted in favour of the verdict. It did the same when the first public legal abortion, to a 11-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather, was performed: the doctors who practiced the operation, the girl and her grandmother were excommunicated by Alfonso López Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family. The rapist was not punished or even mentioned by the Church. Paramilitaries or guerrillas, who have killed, displaced, raped and abused thousands of people, are not excommunicated either.
More recently, sexual abuse scandals have reached the media and caused outrage. As usually occurs, specially since the BBC documentary about the Crimen sollicitationis secret document was broadcasted, Church chooses to cover-up. Father Efraín Rozo confessed in a video his child molestations, committed in the 1960s, as part of a process in a court of Los Angeles. The victims claim they had to go to the American justice, because in Colombia crimes against children prescribe within 20 years. But, after one week silent, cardinal Pedro Rubiano, archbishop of Bogotá, reacted against the evidence instead of facing the issue, claiming that the former was "false", the video, shown by the media late September, was "manipulated", and the plaintiffs, the people abused by Rozo and another two priests, were looking for money. Then, Rubiano insulted a journalist, telling him: "don’t you have any brains, man?".
Rubiano was the same man who in a September 2006 interview asked for "tolerance" from civil society to the Church, besides of criticizing the "omnipotency" of the Constitutional Court and denying Church leaders alleged involvement with drug lords. The Rozo case happens just when the Congress discuss the increase for the sentences against child abusers, but no one of the congresspeople who asked for life imprisonment or the ones known for "defending" children, as Gina Parody, have said a word about the scandal.
When liberals (the few ones who dare in a right-wing administration) deal with issues like abortion or gay rights, the Colombian Church cries out and its position is listened. But when the churchmen are the criminals, they want us to shut up. Or be insulted, as the journalist Rubiano shouted at. And we are really getting tired of it.
