Sun 28 August 2022:
On Saturday, August 28, local media in Colombia reported that the Church had disclosed the names of 26 priests who were under investigation for alleged child sex abuse.
In response to a court decision in favor of Juan Pablo Barrientos, the Archdiocese of Medellin made public the list of those accused between 1995 and 2019.
Journalist Barrientos is investigating into a network of allegedly pedophilic clerics.
“Most of these priests … were suspended for a little while, and went back to being priests again,” said Barrientos, who has been investigating sexual assaults by priests for years, in a video released Saturday.
Barrientos managed to get judges to accept his request and force the Archdiocese of Medellin to make the list public.
On Thursday, the prosecution received 14 of the complaints. The secual abuses were committed years ago.
Monsignor Ricardo Tobon, Archbishop of Medellin, said that the institution wants to “show transparency, commitment to the truth and that there is no purpose of cover-up.”
In a video posted on the Archdiocese’s Twitter account, the religious figure accused Barrientos of “an aggressive smear campaign against the Church.”
The Church revealed the names, the journalist claimed, “because the Constitutional Court has forced it to do so.”
2019 saw the publication of Barrientos’ “Let the Children Come to Me,” an investigation exposing pederasty and cover-up inside the church in the predominantly Roman Catholic South American nation.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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