Italy, victim of abuse, demands an independent investigation: “The Church cannot do it itself”

Antonio Messina was in high school when he was abused by priest Don Giuseppe Rugolo. “It happened from 2009 to 2013, a fairly long period. I finally made it stop,” he says today for the first time. “Where I lived, a small town in Sicily, it was not easy to imagine something like that.”

In 2014, Messina mustered up her courage and witnessed to another priest. “Despite everything, I had not lost my faith. I was convinced that it is good to defend yourself when you go through something like this, in the hope of making the church better.”

This hope turned out to be in vain. When the local bishop heard Messina’s complaint, he offered him silent money. Don Giuseppe Rugolo is transferred but remains in contact with the young people. It was not until 2021, after Italian justice had received several prosecution testimonies, that a trial against him was announced.

#Italychurchtoo

Messina’s story is one of many collected by Rete L’Abuso, an organization that tracks sexual abuse by priests in Italy. After independent investigations into the scale of the scandal were carried out in France, Germany and Portugal, among other places, Rete L’Abuso wanted a similar investigation in Italy. Various organizations and victims united under the hashtag #Italychurchtoo.

Today there was a protest against sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Italy: