THE Roman Catholic Church in Portugal has pledged to tighten procedures against child abuse and remove clerical perpetrators from office, in response to a church-commissioned report that identified almost 5000 victims.

“Nothing can repair the suffering and humiliation caused to victims and their families — but we are available to accompany them in overcoming their wounds,” Bishop José Ornelas Carvalho, who chairs the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference, said.

“Zero tolerance towards abuse has to be a reality throughout the Church. This is an open wound that hurts and shames us, and we ask forgiveness from all the victims.”

The Bishop was reacting to the report by an independent commission on child abuse, presented on Monday at Lisbon’s Catholic University. He said that the report revealed a “harsh and tragic reality” of “perverse practices” among clergy and pastoral workers, who would have to bear “civil, criminal and moral responsibility”, while repenting and changing their lives “with help from competent people”.

He continued: “This study suggests a number much higher than the Catholic Church was able to calculate — the Church apologises for not having known how to create effective forms of listening and internal scrutiny.

“The reality of abuse cannot let us forget the immense good done, so often silently, by priests, religious and lay people, to whom we want to offer a word of comfort and courage. But this is not a finished process — and our diocesan commissions should now play a leading role in prevention, training, and psychological help.”

Presenting the 500-page report, the commission’s co-ordinator, Pedro Strecht, a former Attorney General, said that 512 testimonies of abuse had been validated out of 564 received during 2022, adding that Portugal’s bishops had respected the commission’s “impartiality and independence” throughout its work.

Although the total number of crimes could not be quantified, since some children had suffered multiple abuse, the data pointed to a “very minimum total” of 4815 victims since 1950, Mr Strecht said, while a list of still-living abusers would be submitted to judicial authorities and RC leaders by the end of February.

Vatican procedures for tackling abuse, set out in 2011, require Bishops’ Conference guidelines and specialist anti-abuse centres in co-operation with Vatican dicasteries, and were updated in a 2019 papal motu proprio, Vos estis lux mundi (“You are the light of the world”), whose recommendations were reissued as a 164-page vade mecum in June 2022.

In June 2021, the Code of Canon Law was also reformed under an Apostolic Constitution, Pascite gregem Dei (“Tend the flock of God”), which included sexual abuse among “crimes against life, dignity and human freedom”, along with the possession or dissemination of pornography.

Portugal’s RC bishops announced the independent commission, drawing on lawyers, psychologists, social workers, and historians, at the Marian shrine of Fatima in November 2021, a month after a church-commissioned report in France estimated widespread child abuse by clergy and church workers since the 1950s.

As well as France, independent commissions have been asked to study abuse by Bishops’ Conferences in Germany and Spain, and are being considered in other countries, including Poland.

In its report, the Portuguese commission called for improved “training protocols” at priestly seminaries, and a new institution to continue monitoring abuse in the Church.

It also warned, however, that past church responses had been “characterised by denial, cleavage, projection, and hierarchical concealment”, with priority given to “defending the Church’s institutional reputation to the detriment of empathy”, and said that no action had been taken to remove accused clergy in two-thirds of reported cases, leaving victims “in a situation of helplessness”.

In his statement, Bishop Ornelas said that his Bishops’ Conference would analyse the report and unveil “concrete measures” at a plenary session in March to ensure “effective and adequate mechanisms” for preventing and tackling abuse.

The bishops, he said, would remove any clergy named on the commission’s list from church offices in compliance with civil regulations and canon law, while also ensuring the protection of minors at the RC Church’s World Youth Day, which is to be attended by the Pope at Lisbon in August.