Accuser tells her story of abuse and manipulation by the ‘Archangel’

ITALY
Crux

Claire Giangravè
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Apr 24, 2018

CATANIA, Italy – His followers called him the Archangel.

People would come from far and wide to see him, to speak to him, to touch him. The word of Piero Alfio Capuana, the 70-year-old leader of the “Catholic Culture and Environment Association,” or ACCA, a lay movement in the Church, was law.

In 2013, when Capuana called “Maria,” at the time only 11, into his study, she says she followed. When he locked the door behind her, she says she stayed. When he told her to sit on the desk in front of him, she says she sat, and when he ordered her to take off her shirt, she says, eventually, in tears, she obeyed.

“He had my life in his hand. Him. Everything. He had power over everything about me,” Maria, using a false name to protect her identity, told Crux in an April 22 interview.

“For me, he was important. He had that personality, that thing inside, that wasn’t human. When he would tell me, ‘Do this because it’s right,’ I would do it. Or when he said, ‘Don’t do this thing because it’s wrong,’ I’d obey without batting an eyelash,” she said.

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