Antonio Messina was in high school when he was abused by priest Don Giuseppe Rugolo. “It happened from 2009 to 2013, quite a long period. I finally made sure that it stopped,” he says today for the first time. “Where I lived, a small town in Sicily, it wasn’t easy to come out with something like that.”
In 2014, Messina gathered his courage and took his testimony to another priest. “Despite everything, I hadn’t lost my faith. I was convinced that it is good to stand up for yourself when you go through something like this, in the hope of making the church better.”
That hope proved futile. When the local bishop heard Messina’s complaint, he offered him hush money. Don Giuseppe Rugolo was transferred, but kept in touch with young people. Only in 2021, after the Italian justice had received several incriminating testimony, was a trial against him announced.
#Italychurchtoo
The story of Messina is one of many collected by Rete L’Abuso, an organization that charts sexual abuse by priests in Italy. After independent investigations into the scale of the scandal had been conducted in France, Germany and Portugal, among others, Rete L’Abuso wanted a similar investigation in Italy. Various organizations and victims have united under the hashtag #Italychurchtoo.
Today there was a protest against the sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Italy:
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