MEXICO
Catholic Register
BY DAVID AGREN, CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
November 24, 2016
MEXICO CITY – When Father Daniel Portillo set about designing programs to protect children and address allegations of sexual abuse, he quickly encountered a core challenge in Mexico: an unwillingness to acknowledge the very existence of a problem with predatory priests.
“The first aspect to overcome is saying that this does not exist in Mexico. It exists. Pedophilia among priests exists,” said Father Portillo, a professor at the Pontifical University of Mexico and the director of the newly formed Center for Investigation and Interdisciplinary Training for the Protection of Minors at the school.
“We were in denial, thinking and supposing that it didn’t exist or it wasn’t here or it was an American or Anglo-Saxon problem,” Father Portillo said. “It’s a problem hitting us at a global level.”
Sex crimes committed by priests against children have caused scandals in Mexico and undercut the church’s credibility.
That credibility was especially hurt by revelations that the Legionaries of Christ founder, Father Marciel Maciel, who was considered close with some in the Catholic hierarchy and the country’s political and economic elites, sexually abused seminarians. The allegations of abuse made against Father Maciel stayed out of the press, while an advertising boycott was brought against a lone news outlet to report the scandal in the late 1990s.
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