Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - A GROWING sex abuse scandal is rocking the world's largest national Catholic congregation.
A Brazilian priest has been given a long jail sentence after a court heard extracts from a diary that read like a pedophile priest's how-to manual. A magazine earlier published evidence that, according to estimates by Vatican investigators, one in 10 of Brazil's priests was involved in some form of sexual misdemeanour.
The signs of abuse in a country that is home to about 125 million Catholics will be of particular concern to the church hierarchy. Until now Catholic leaders comforted themselves with the belief that, no matter how battered its reputation in rich nations such as the US, the church continued to be held in high esteem in the developing world.
Regina Soares Jurkwicz, author of Unveiling the Politics of Silence: Sexual Abuse of Women by Priests in Brazil, said the nation could now be facing a problem of even greater dimensions than that uncovered in the US in 2002.
"The Catholic Church doesn't know what to do," she said. "In Brazil the [typical] reaction of the Catholic hierarchy is first to try to cover up the problem or discredit the witness. Then, it is to transfer the priest to another community, which is not told why he was transferred there."
A Vatican commission visited Brazil in September to investigate reports of a 70 per cent leap in the number of priests involved in cases of sexual misbehaviour. According to its report, 10 per cent of Brazil's priests - some 1700 clerics - were involved in cases of sexual misconduct, including the physical abuse of children and women.
Father Tarcisio Tadeu Spricigo, 48, was jailed last week for 15 years for sexually abusing two boys, one of them a five-year-old. In his diary the priest stressed the need "to have boys who can keep a secret and without sexual scruples".