I took Ferreira da Silva during a mass Courtesy
The Brazilian bishop Tomé Ferreira da Silva, who was in charge of a diocese of the Catholic Church in the interior of the State of São Paulo, has been dismissed by the Vatican fulminant after a sexual video recorded during a video call leaked last Friday. with another man.
The Catholic priest appears in the tape as he strips and masturbates, according to
Veja
magazine
.
The images, which are edited and circulated on social networks, have implied the departure of the priest, who was under suspicion in 2018 for ignoring reports of sexual abuse by other priests.
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Both the Vatican and the Episcopal Conference of Brazil omitted, in the statements in which they reported his departure, the reason why Bishop Da Silva left his post.
They limit themselves to saying that he asked for his resignation and that Pope Francis has accepted it.
Da Silva was in charge of the diocese of São José do Río Preto since 2012, about 450 kilometers from São Paulo inland.
Until his resignation, he was in charge of almost 30 municipalities with 70 parishes and dozens of priests.
Brazil contributes 123 million faithful to the Catholic Church, more than any other country.
In any case, the community has been declining for decades before the strength of the evangelicals, especially the neo-Pentecostals.
Despite their enormous size, reported or even investigated cases of sexual abuse number little more than a handful.
Nothing to do with the avalanche of cases in dioceses like that of the United States, with 7,000 priests investigated, or in those of some European countries.
The biggest scandal of sexual abuse known in its bosom is the conviction, in 2019, against the diocese of Paraíba for sexual exploitation of minors.
A labor court ordered the hierarchy to pay almost 3 million euros because a group of priests regularly paid for sex, with money or food, to seminarians, altar boys and valet parking.
Tomé Ferreira da Silva during a religious celebration at his church in Brazil Courtesy
Another case has had an impact recently.
In January, it became known that the Vatican and the Brazilian police were investigating the Metropolitan Archbishop of Belém, Alberto Taveira Correa, for sexual abuse, following complaints from four seminarians.
One of the complainants told this newspaper that he was blackmailed into accepting the abuses.
The denounced archbishop had created a commission, at the head of which he placed himself, to investigate sexual crimes.
The removed bishop was now under suspicion for a long time for various reasons.
The Catholic Church investigated him three years ago for having ignored allegations of sexual abuse.
After those investigations, carried out by Bishop José Negri, a friend of the Pope, Da Silva left a coordinating position that he held in the Episcopal Conference, but remained at the head of the diocese.
Those suspicions weren't the first.
A few years earlier, he was in the crosshairs of his superiors after anonymous complaints.
The Archbishop of São Paulo investigated them and concluded that they were inconsistent.
Rumors suggested that the bishop caught by a video call had a romantic relationship with his driver and that he had taken money from the Church to give it to him.
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