Report will be made public tomorrow

The commission that in January 2022 began investigating sexual abuse in Portugal’s Catholic church has delivered its final report to the Church today.

The document which refers to “hundreds of testimonies” will be released to the media tomorrow during a presentation in Lisbon.

Pedro Strecht, the child psychiatrist who has led the commission throughout, is understood to have delivered the report to the Portuguese Catholic Bishops’ Conference (CEP), whose president, the bishop of Leiria-Fatima, José Ornelas, has scheduled a statement on its contents for 4pm tomorrow.

Says Lusa, an extraordinary plenary assembly of the Episcopal Conference has already been convened for March 3 to analyse the report.

Without giving final figures, the commission announced in its last public statement in October that it had already registered 424 validated testimonies, including cases of abuse that occurred since 1950. Victims ages were put at “between 15 and 88”.

“The members of the commission made it…