According to local media, 26 priests in Colombia’s Catholic Church have had their names made public after being under investigation for sexually abusing minors there. In reaction to a court decision in favour of Juan Pablo Barrientos, a journalist looking into an alleged network of paedophile clergy, the Diocese of Medellin made public the list of persons accused between 1995 and 2019.
In a video released on Saturday, Barrientos, who has been looking into priest sexual assault for years, said that ‘Most of these priests … were suspended for a little while, and went back to being priests again.’ According to the Church document, the abuses were committed years ago, but the prosecution, which has not commented on the investigations, received 14 of the complaints on Thursday.
The institution wishes to ‘show transparency, commitment to the truth and that there is no purpose of cover-up,’ according to Monsignor Ricardo Tobon, Archbishop of Medellin. The religious leader accused Barrientos of waging ‘an aggressive smear campaign against the Church’ in a video that was posted to the Archdiocese’s Twitter account.
The Church released the names, the journalist claimed, ‘because the Constitutional Court forced it to do so.’ 2019 saw the release of Barrientos’ ‘Let the Children Come to Me,’ an investigation exposing pederasty and cover-up inside the church in the mainly Roman Catholic South American nation.
The Church made failed legal efforts to prevent the book’s release. In the nation, at least six priests have served prison terms for raping children.
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