ROSARIO (ARGENTINA)
Crux
January 7, 2019
By Inés San Martín
Speaking on background, a Vatican official told Crux in early December that when the crisis of clerical sexual abuse explodes in Pope Francis’s native Argentina, the situation would be dramatic.
Odds are he wasn’t referring to the recently disclosed allegations of abuse against two priests from the Monasterio del Cristo Orante, or the Monastery of the Praying Christ in the province of Mendoza, some 700 miles from Buenos Aires, closer to Chile than to the Argentine capital, but that doesn’t make it any less dramatic.
Of a clear traditionalist tint, with daily Mass in Latin and the monastic tradition of silence firmly upheld, pilgrims and the merely curious are greeted with a sign describing the place not as a “touristic destination, a camping site nor a place for a picnic,” but as a “house of prayer.”
Yet as of Thursday, the monastery is no longer primarily a place of quiet contemplation. Instead, it’s become a closed-off structure resembling a medieval fortress, as the archbishop of Mendoza deemed the accusations to be credible enough to merit further investigation. The prelate, Marcelo Daniel Colombo, said the measure was “preventive” and “temporary.”
Two priests are currently in prison and awaiting trial, accused of sexually abusing a former student of the community who was a minor at the time and tried to enter the community in 2009. The alleged abuses are said to have continued until 2015, when the young man was 23. The two accused are today over 50.
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