ITALY
il Repubblica
Repubblica — 23 marzo 2008 pagina 7 sezione: FIRENZE
PER trenta anni era rimasto avvolto nell' ombra, protetto dal silenzio, dalla vergogna e dell' omertà. L' 8 aprile 2007, domenica di Pasqua, lo scandalo degli abusi nella parrocchia fiorentina della Regina della Pace divenne pubblico sulle pagine del nostro giornale. Un anno più tardi, una Pasqua dopo, tutto risulta confermato: sia le rivelazioni delle ex parrocchiane ed ex parrocchiani della Regina della Pace sulle violenze e le perversioni di don Lelio Cantini, sia il racconto del giovane commerciante gay Paolo Chiassoni sulla notte sadomaso trascorsa anni fa in una canonica in compagnia di alcuni sacerdoti e di un alto prelato, da lui riconosciuto nel vescovo ausiliario di Firenze Claudio Maniago, allievo prediletto di don Cantini.
[translation]
The Rev. Cantini, under investigation for the "decime" (one tenth of the stipends) and the money the parishioners gave the priest
For the past thirty years he remained in the dark, protected by silence, by shame and complicity. On April 8, 2007, on Easter Sunday, the scandal for the abuses committed in the Florentine parish "Regina della Pace" (Queen of Peace), became public in our newspaper. A year later, the following Easter, everything was confirmed: the revelations of former female and males parishioners of the Regina della Pace about the violence and perversion of the Rev. Lelio Cantini and also the report by the gay businessman Paolo Chiassoni about the night of the sadomasochistic happening in a rectory. He had participated together with some priests and a high prelate, whom he recognized as the auxiliary bishop of Florence Claudio Maniago, the favourite pupil of the Rev. Cantini.
A year later the investigation of the prosecutor Paolo Canessa hasn't stopped yet. The abuses reported by the numerous witnesses are very grave and date back to 20-30 years ago and for that they are covered by the statute of limitation. Some former female parishioners endured sexual violence when they were 11-12-years-old and they have been suffering the consequences since then. Sometimes the priest forced them to oral sex after confession, pretending to give them the blessed Host: a behavior which, under canon law is subject to excommunication. One of the victims is even today, after 40 years, under psychiatric care and being terrorized she can't live without taking prescription drugs. To each abused little girl or female teen ager the priest said she was "his favorite".
Only years later, when they were adult, they discovered their parish priest had abused many of them and (according to what some of them said) some boys were included too. Their reports (the prosecutor listened to many witnesses) made a very disturbing picture from which the Rev. Lelio Cantini - the stern prior, authoritarian and sexuophobic to the point of forbidding wearing jeans to his young female parishioners - emerged as a compulsive abuser. The consequence is that all the youngest and young people who frequented the parish Regina della Pace, even in the recent years, were potentially under the risk of being abused. Therefore the investigations were shifted to the last years in which the Rev. Lelio Cantini was still the parish priest. They included the patrimonial aspect, too. Some former female parishioners reported having delivered the priest the "decima" (that's one tenth of their stipend). Those donations were deposited in a bank and some of the families were induced to give up their inherited goods and homes on behalf of the parish. Where did all those properties end up and which, according to the priest, were to be used to build a "real church", a "parallel church"?
The witnessing of the young gay, Paolo Chiassoni, widened the front of the investigation to the bishop Claudio Maniago, the smartest pupil of the Rev. Cantini. Chiassoni said he fled from the rectory at the end of the night in which the sadomasochist events took place and of having later being contacted other times by the priests he had met, accepting what was defined an offer, given perhaps in exchange for his silence: three million lires credited in his account in the town of Lesi, situated in the Marche region. The carabinieri found the paper trace of that money, which had been debited to the account of another parish. It was found out that near the church where the sadistic and masochistic encounter took place there was a summer residence for disabled people and a center of assistance for drug addicted people.
FRANCA SELVATICI