REGGIO CALABRIA Investigated for pedophilia in 2017 after the complaint of a young man of Romanian origins, the legal case for a priest was closed due to the statute of limitations. After a suspension “precautionarily awaiting the conclusions of the ongoing investigations”, at the end of the trial which stalled in 2019 due to the time that had passed since the abuse, the man was appointed as pastoral collaborator in Bagnara Calabra. Today he is the parish priest of the church in Concessa, on the northern outskirts of Reggio Calabria. The story of the priest with the “double life”, former parish priest of San Gregorio, is told on the pages of Everyday occurrence. The person who collected the complaint of the then 14-year-old was Roberto di Palma, the current prosecutor of the Juvenile Court of Reggio Calabria. The indictment states that the priest “with multiple actions of the same criminal plan”, allegedly “performed sexual acts (fellatio) with a person who was under 14 at the time of the crime”. All of this “with the aggravating circumstance of having committed the crime, in some cases, while the injured party was in a state of intoxication”. Against the priest who «celebrated mass during the day wearing the cassock and at night took off his collar to go out in his Mini Cooper in search of transgressions»«very serious accusations, – the newspaper reconstructs – to which was added the child pornography material found during the search of the parish priest’s home but, above all, the wiretaps that closed the circle on the investigation». «When he read those wiretaps, in which the investigated priest spoke of sexual encounters, even group ones (many of which with consenting people), Monsignor Morosini not only removed him from the church of San Gregorio, but also reached out to the abused boy, placing himself – wrote the Calabrian edition of the bishops’ newspaper – “in a loving attitude towards the alleged victims, asking forgiveness for any harm done”. A gesture of no small importance, that of Monsignor Morosini, who chose a very different direction from that of his successor. Who, flaunting the guarantees of a Church attentive to the sinner, responds to the controversies of these hours, which have appeared on some local sites, with a patch that is worse than the hole. The note published on the institutional website of the archdiocese, in fact – we read in the Fatto Quotidiano – mixes the cards and so the prescription (which is not a conviction, but not even an acquittal) “miraculously” becomes an archiving. “Following the dismissal of the charges against him for relations with a minor, as well as the declaration of the competent Vatican Dicastery, – the press release states – the Diocese, which slavishly followed the indications of the Roman Dicastery, deemed it appropriate for an entire two-year period to support and have the aforementioned priest accompanied by a specialist psychotherapist, external to the ecclesial reality, and by two brothers. At the conclusion of this process, it was objectively possible to consider entrusting him with the role of pastoral collaborator (not ‘parish priest’) of the parish of S. Maria ei XII Apostoli in Bagnara Calabra and most recently that of administrator pro-tempore of the parish of S. Maria del Buon Consiglio in Concessa”».
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