BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — An Argentine bishop named by Pope Francis to steer a strong Vatican workplace that ensures doctrinal orthodoxy on Monday rejected accusations that he refused to consider victims of sexual abuse by a priest, saying he took actions when the allegations resurfaced in 2019.
Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernández, archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, was appointed to go the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Religion, whose mandate contains dealing with intercourse abuse allegations lodged towards clergy.
BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts group that maintains a web based archive of abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, mentioned over the weekend in an announcement that Fernández refused to consider victims who accused Eduardo Lorenzo, a priest within the La Plata archdiocese, of sexually abusing boys.
In an announcement despatched by La Plata Archbishop’s workplace to the Related Press on Monday, Fernández acknowledged that he “by no means” mentioned he did not consider the victims, and that he took actions to ban the priest from all actions with minors and confine him to church services.
“When somebody information an accusation of this sort, in precept they’re all the time believed,” he mentioned. “However an investigation can be wanted and to observe the due course of established within the regulation.”
Fernández additionally mentioned that in late 2019, Argentina’s justice system ordered preventive detention for Lorenzo. The priest took his personal life, and Fernández mentioned that if he hadn’t “he would in all probability have confronted a felony trial later.”
However BishopAccountablity.org mentioned that after a 2008 little one abuse grievance towards Lorenzo resurfaced in 2019, the archbishop printed a letter from the priest on the archdiocese’s web site. In it, the priest denied the abuse allegation and mentioned he was slandered.
The archbishop later went to the accused priest’s parish and celebrated a Mass with him, in line with BishopAccountability.org.
Fernández additionally mentioned Francis advised him in a letter that as new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Religion, he would concentrate on doctrinal issues, and go away any little one abuse instances to a special disciplinary workplace.
An in depth adviser to the Argentine-born pontiff, Fernández has been nicknamed the “pope’s theologian″ as a result of he’s extensively believed to have helped writer a few of Francis’ most essential paperwork. Francis named him to go the La Plata archdiocese in 2018.
The pope has promised that the Catholic Church will adhere to a zero-tolerance coverage on clergy sexual abuse.