LISBON, Portugal (AP) — When a panel of experts read aloud some of the harrowing accounts they had collected from recently discovered victims of child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church, the country’s senior bishops squirmed in the auditorium’s front-row seats.During a live television broadcast, the experts reported in February that at least 4,815 boys and girls had been abused since 1950, most aged 10-14.
Before the stunning findings, senior Portuguese church officials had maintained there had been only a handful of cases of clergy sex abuse. They lost even more credibility with a response so clumsy and hesitant that victims were inspired to form Portugal’s first survivor advocacy group to press for compensation.
Pope Francis will wade into the quagmire of Portugal’s reckoning with its legacy of clergy abuse and cover-up when he arrives in Lisbon next Wednesday to participate in World Youth Day, the international Catholic youth rally. While there is no mention of the scandal on the pontiff’s official agenda, he is expected to meet with victims during his visit.
Francis will also visit the shrine at Fatima, a rural Portuguese town that is one of the Catholic Church’s most popular pilgrimage destinations. In 1917, three Portuguese shepherd children reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary above a tree there, a singular event of 20th century church history.
Antonio Grosso, who says he was sexually abused at a for …
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