SAN LORENZO DE EL ESCORIAL, Spain - Roman Catholic bishops from Europe and Latin America insisted that pedophilia among priests in their countries is at most a "marginal" problem.
Those who suggest it is anything more, they said Tuesday, are just trying to make the church look bad.
But some Catholics at a meeting of clergy, theologians and faith-based aid organizations from both continents wanted the hierarchy to own up to the existence of the phenomenon outside the United States.
"Let's be honest," said Anne Offermans of the Dutch charity Cordaid. "It's no different here."
In the first meeting of its kind, Latin American archbishops met with European counterparts in this panoramic 16th-century town in the mountains north of Madrid in an attempt to influence the agenda of an EU-Latin America summit later this week in the capital.
Thirty-three Latin American and Caribbean leaders — including Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez — are expected to come to Madrid with requests for aid in the face of political chaos and economic instability in their region.
In their own meeting, the clergy pondered Christian views on terrorism, globalization, immigration and poverty, as they met in a conference center next to the hulking El Escorial monastery built by Philip II, a king so devout that he used it as his own palace and insisted that his bedroom have a direct view of the altar.
The issue of sexual abuse in the chapel, let alone pedophilia, was absent from the two days of speeches and workshops.
"This problem is marginal in Venezuelan society and in the Venezuelan church," Msgr. Baltazar Porras, president of the national Catholic bishops' conference, told The Associated Press.
However, Porras conceded that his church faces an dlrs 80 million lawsuit from the United States for allowing a Colombian-born priest practice in Venezuela after pleading guilty in New York to sexually abusing three boys.
He claimed it was an isolated case and that Latin American culture is not conducive to pedophilia.
"I think that in a macho society like Latin America, these types of situations are naturally rejected," he said, questioning the authenticity of the pedophile cases coming to light in the United States.
"It's clear that in the United States there are law firms that are dedicated to this type of problem in order to win large sums of money," he said.
Msgr. Elias Yanes Alvarez, former head of the Spanish bishops' conference and now archbishop of Saragossa, also suspects ulterior motives.
Why else, he asked, would Spanish media give daily coverage to such an issue "in a country so distant from ours?"
"I have the impression that someone has interests in spreading to the whole world the negative information of the American media," the bishop added, refusing to be more specific.
It is explanations like these that Mario Coolen, a theologian on the Dutch bishops' Latin American advisory council, find "very hard to swallow."
"In Latin America, pedophilia is denied, it is covered up, or blamed on 'other interests,'" he said. "This is an inability to discuss delicate issues openly."
Offermans, the charity organizer, said that in 1995, church leaders in the Netherlands set up a confidential "Help and Justice" hot line to encourage victims of sexual abuse to come forward. Of 200 complaints, she said, 40 were deemed "well-founded" and several were referred to criminal prosecutors.
A stack of 50 flyers she laid on a table explaining how the hot line works was gone within hours after the more than 130 delegates arrived Monday.
"They won't say it openly but they are interested," Offermans said.