ROME
Crux
November 8, 2017
By Claire Giangravè
The preliminary hearing in a trial of the leader of a Catholic lay association, who is charged with the sexual abuse of at least six underage girls, took place Nov. 4 in southern Italy. Three of the alleged victims took to the stand to testify to their accounts of the abuses which the accused was able to perpetrate for the better part of forty years with no ecclesiastic or governmental oversight.
ROME – In a case that raises questions about how an association proclaiming itself Catholic and meeting in a parish could escape Church oversight for decades, a Nov. 4 preliminary hearing in a trial of the group’s leader on sexual abuse charges featured testimony from three of his alleged female victims.
Pietro Alfio , 73, has been under arrest since Aug. 2, when an investigation called ‘Operation 12 Apostles,’ conducted by police in Sicily, uncovered a deep web of political, ecclesiastic and judicial ties that allegedly allowed Capuana to carry on abuses within the lay-led ‘Culture and Environment Catholic Association,’ or ACCA.
The group is listed as a ‘civil association’ and has up to 5,000 followers, who still meet in the little-known municipality of Aci Bonacorsi, located inside the Diocese of Acireale on the Italian island of Sicily.
By all accounts, Capuana was a charismatic and charming personality, referred to as ‘Archangel’ by his disciples.
During the preliminary hearing, local reports say that Capuana, wearing blue trousers and a light-colored shirt, “dragged himself” into the courtroom, looking thin and weary and accompanied by four armed penitentiary guards.
The hearing was presided over by the magistrate in charge of preliminary investigations, Anna Maria Cristaldi, and took place behind closed doors.
Three girls, one of them still a minor, took to the stand to testify before the judge, accompanied by their lawyer Tommaso Tamburino. Capuana was not allowed to see the witnesses as he stood behind bars, with a wooden screen hiding the witnesses in order to protect their identity. After the hearing, the girls exited through a back door.
Capuana was silent though most of the hearing, except for the few times he muttered indignantly at the accusations before being reprimanded by the judge.
Though the hearing was secret, the pre-trial detention order for Capuana, obtained by Crux in collaboration with local media outlet Laspiapress, revealed the grisly details discovered during the police investigation, including wiretaps of conversations among the alleged perpetrators.
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