ROME (ITALY)
Crux
November 1, 2018
By Claire Giangravè
More than a year after the head of a lay movement in southern Italy was accused of sexually abusing underage girls, the local diocese has not exercised any new form of oversight and has suspended a trial against one of its priests who allegedly broke the confessional seal to inform the group’s leaders of a police investigation.
“From the Church and from the Diocese of Acireale I haven’t even heard a ‘how are you?’ Total silence,” said the mother of one of the victims, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter’s identity, in a phone interview with Crux Oct. 31.
“It’s as if I didn’t exist,” she said, “as if my daughter and the other girls who were abused were nonexistent.”
In August 2017, Piero Alfio Capuana, 75, was taken into custody after a police investigation found credible proof that he had abused at least six underage girls who were members of his lay group, the “Catholic Culture and Environment Association” or ACCA, headquartered in the town of Acireale, near Catania, in Sicily.
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