Madrid, Spain, Jul 19, 2007 / 08:10 am
The Apostolic Nuncio in Spain, Archbishop Manuel Monteiro, said this week data from international organizations shows that priests are responsible for the smallest percentage of sexual abuse.
In a reference to the accusations of clerical abuse, in both real and fabricated cases, the archbishop said, “Why should the Church pay and other entities not?” He decried that news of clerical abuse appears “every day on the front pages of certain media,” which he called a form of “discrimination” against the Church “with evil intentions.”
“Read the newspapers, and you will find the same cases every day, sometimes a whole page long, and that is where you can see the evil intentions,” he continued, “and that is called discrimination, no matter how sincere they are trying be.”
The Nuncio made his comments in the city of Aranjuez, where he was participating in a conference at the King Juan Carlos University.