Catholic priests abusing nuns

WHERE IS THE REAL CELIBACY TAUGHT BY CHRIST?????????

Roman Catholic priests and bishops in several parts of the world have been exploiting their religious authority to obtain sexual favours from nuns, in some cases resorting to rape and subsequently obliging the victims to seek an abortion, it was claimed yesterday.
Report of widespread sexual abuses were compiled by two senior nuns between 1994 and 1998 and passed to the Vatican, the Rome daily La Repubblica and the Italian Roman Catholic news agency Adista said.

Abuses were documented in 23 countries, many of them in Africa, but also in Ireland, Italy, the US, the Philippines and Brazil, they said.

The Vatican acknowledged the existence of the problem yesterday and said it was working with bishops and the heads of religious orders to try to resolve it.

"The problem is known and is restricted to a limited geographic area," its spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said.

"A few negative situations must not make us forget the often heroic faithfulness of the vast majority of monks, nuns and priests."

The Aids epidemic in Africa has led to nuns being seen as a potential source of safe sex, according to Sister Maura O'Donohue, of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, who visited numerous African countries to conduct an Aids study on behalf of the Catholic development agency Cafod.

"The superior of a religious community in one country was contacted by priests who asked her to make the nuns available for sexual services," she wrote.

On the superior's refusal, the priests said they would otherwise have to go to the village to look for women, exposing themselves to the risk of Aids."

The reports, one of which is said to have been delivered three years ago to Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, head of the Vatican department responsible for religious orders, say young female candidates for religious life are sometimes obliged to have sex with a priest to obtain the necessary certificates.

Nuns who became pregnant were forced to leave their religious congregation, the reports say, while the priests responsible were simply sent away for a brief period.

In one community 29 nuns are reported to have become pregnant after sexual relations with priests, but when the mother superior raised the problem with her archbishop she was removed from her post. One priest is said to have induced a nun he had impregnated to have an abortion and when she died during the operation he celebrated her funeral mass.

Another priest is reported to have been driven from his village by gunfire when the local men got fed up with the way he abused his power with their women.

Many African women have been raised to consider themselves inferior to men, and so find it difficult to say no to requests for sexual favours by priests, who are seen as authority figures, according to a report by Sister Marie McDonald, superior general of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa, quoted by Adista.

The priests are better educated than the nuns and sometimes use false theological arguments to persuade them, suggesting, for example, that sex between two celibate religious does not violate their vows of celibacy, she said.

Father Bernardo Cervellera, editor of the missionary news agency Fides, said the problem was largely confined to Africa, where the ideal of celibacy met resistance from cultural beliefs that set great store on fatherhood.

"In 25 years as a missionary priest I have never encountered this situation. I have come across the opposite, where priests have defended nuns from assault," he said.

"We shouldn't confuse a few individual errors with a tendency. I admire many African priests, who live their vocation with great heroism."