Mozambican justice charged a priest accused of child abuse against Portuguese Bishop José Ornelas in 2011, a source at the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) in Maputo told Lusa today.
Africa 21 Digital with Lusa
Luciano Caminotti “was charged with the authorship of the material and the crime of indecent exposure” and “August 23, a preliminary hearing was opened, which took place on September 2,” PGR points out in response to questions posed by Lusa.
“In this regard, both the prosecutor’s office and the defendant are awaiting notification from the Judicial Court of the Province of Zambezia – Criminal Investigation Division” regarding the progress of the process, he adds without further details.
PGR did not answer other questions, namely whether Bishop Ornelas, who presides over the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference, has filed a complaint since 2011 or was otherwise involved in the case.
According to the same note sent to Lusa, the case was filed 11 years ago at the District Attorney’s Office of the Republic of Guru, where Caminotti had an orphanage.
“The aforementioned case was sent to the Zambezia Provincial Prosecutor’s Office and registered under the number 179/2014 of the Correctional Police, in which Father Luciano Caminotti was charged with ill-treatment and indecent assault,” he refers.
In 2014, “an order was issued to drop the charge due to lack of evidence”, the order was “not approved” by the authorities: “new investigative actions were ordered based on new discovered elements,” he points out, without specifying which ones.
The context led to the reopening of the process, this time with the number 596/2020 of December 15, 2020, in the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Zambezia.
It is in that sequence that on October 30, 2021, Caminotti’s father is “indicted for material authorship and the perfect form of the crime of indecent assault,” leading up to a preliminary hearing held a month ago, the note, without reference, says. process details.
In Portugal, the Ministry of State (MP) confirmed on Saturday that it was investigating Bishop José Ornelas for allegedly covering up sexual harassment, showing that an investigation with possible links to the case had already taken place in 2011.
According to Público, the bishop was leading the Order of the Dechon in 2011 when the teacher was confronted with alleged cases of sexual abuse at the Luciano Cominotti Orphanage in Mozambique, an institution with 50 children, some of whom were attending classes in a mission led by Dechon priest Hilário Verri, where teacher João Oliveira listened to the evidence.
The same professor now sent a new complaint to the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic against José Ornelas, arguing that the prelate “failed to report to the authorities the mistreatment of several minors when he was president of the Order of the Dechonians.”
The Bishop denied Público’s information about the concealment of complaints of sexual abuse.
It was José Ornelas who, at the end of 2021, announced the creation of an independent commission to study abuse in the Catholic Church of Portugal, coordinated by child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht and expected to present the findings of its work in January. next year.
