LISBON, Portugal – A Portuguese city mentioned on Thursday it will reinstall a billboard highlighting sexual abuse by clergy after dealing with heavy criticism for eradicating it on the day Pope Francis arrived within the nation to attend a large youth occasion.
Francis landed in Lisbon on Wednesday for the week-long World Youth Day, an occasion devised by the late Pope John Paul II for Catholics of their teenagers or early 20s and held each two or three years in a special metropolis.
The occasion comes lower than six months after a report by a Portuguese fee mentioned no less than 4,815 minors have been sexually abused by clergy – principally monks – over seven many years. The fee in cost mentioned that was simply the “tip of the iceberg”.
In the early hours of Wednesday, earlier than Francis’ arrival, marketing campaign group This Is Our Memorial put up three billboards in Lisbon and the close by municipalities of Oeiras and Loures, the place occasions associated to World Youth Day are additionally going down.
The billboards learn “4,800+ children abused by the Catholic Church in Portugal” and have 4,815 dots representing every sufferer.
The Oeiras municipality eliminated the billboard on Wednesday, describing it as “illegal advertising”, a transfer the group described as “censorship”. Many others slammed the municipality’s resolution on social media.
In a press release, the Oeiras municipality mentioned the group had not requested for permission to place it up however that each events have been now in contact and that the billboard can be restored.
“We have never practiced censorship and we never will,” the municipality mentioned. “This was a regrettable episode, which tarnished the just and worthy cause of defending victims of pedophilia.”
This Is Our Memorial group mentioned it continued to query the legality of the elimination and was now ready for the reinstallation to be “carried out as promised”.
Francis, who might be in Portugal till Aug. 6, mentioned on Wednesday the Church wanted a “humble and ongoing purification” to take care of the “anguished cries” of victims of clerical sexual abuse, who he met privately on the Vatican embassy in Lisbon. — Reuters
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
