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	Guyana Had Expelled Child-abusing Priests By Bert Wilkinson Caribbean Life April 5, 2010 http://www.caribbeanlifenews.com/articles/2010/04/05/breaking_news/caribbeanlife-cl_top_story-2010_04_05_wilkinson_church.txt Although they had kept the issue under wraps, members of the Catholic Diocese of Guyana are feeling proud for respondingmore appropriately than their European counterparts to the child-abuse scandal now rocking the church. In the mid ‘90s, Guyana’s Catholic Church quietly expelled two native-born priests from its fold for having sex and engaging in other forms of inappropriate behavior with young boys, officials close to the Diocese said at the weekend. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials said the Church was determined to keep the issue from the media at the time but approaches to this have changed now given the global media focus on the Church, deviant priests being exposed and the way the Church has handled or mishandled the entire question of priests abusing children worldwide. In fact, Church officials are patting themselves on the back for being more proactive on the issue than counterpart Churches in the U.S., the U.K. and other regions, contending that they imposed the maximum penalties rather than sweep it under the rug and deny the existence of a problem. Trinidadian Francis Alleyne, the current Catholic Bishop of Guyana said he was not around in the ‘90s and would not comment on the expulsion of the two Guyanese priests referring media to other veteran priests who were active at the time. But he does admit that “it is something that we as Church leaders have to face squarely. We can’t hide it.You can’t avoid dealing with the criminal aspect of something like abuse of children,” he said in an interview. “People trust their doctors and priests and sometimes even doubt their own children when they complain about abuse by priests,” he added. Catholic bishops from across the region are due to meet in Grenada for a week from April 17. The child sex issue is so far not an agenda item, but Alleyne admits that it will likely attract major discussion at the conference. As yet, there have been no formal complaints about the current batch of priests abusing children since he has been bishop of Guyana in the last five years. “You hear little comments, people speculate but nothing by way of formal complaint” Indian priests from India make up almost half of the active 33 priests in the diocese with the remainder coming from the U.K, Asia and other places. He says the Church has been proactive and recently brought an expert from the U.K. to teach a program named Virtus, that mandates every priest to participate in training workshops about protecting children. Other Caribbean nations are also organizing the workshops to help priests struggling with inner demons, to deal with them with professional help. “This is now a requirement in the U.K. and the U.S. Every priest has to undertake it,” said Alleyne.
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