By Catarina Demony
LISBON (Reuters) – A Portuguese town said on Thursday it would reinstall a billboard highlighting sexual abuse by clergy after facing heavy criticism for removing it on the day Pope Francis arrived in the country to attend a massive youth event.
Francis landed in Lisbon on Wednesday for the week-long World Youth Day, an event devised by the late Pope John Paul II for Catholics in their teens or early 20s and held every two or three years in a different city.
The event comes less than six months after a report by a Portuguese commission said at least 4,815 minors were sexually abused by clergy – mostly priests – over seven decades. The commission in charge said that was just the “tip of the iceberg”.
In the early hours of Wednesday, before Francis’ arrival, campaign group This Is Our Memorial put up three billboards in Lisbon and the nearby municipalities of Oeiras and Loures, where events related to World Youth Day are also taking place.
The billboards read “4,800+ children abused by the Catholic Church in Portugal” and feature 4,815 dots representing each victim.
The Oeiras municipality removed the billboard on Wednesday, describing it as “illegal advertising”, a move the group described as “censorship”. Many others slammed the municipality’s decision on social media.
In a statement, the Oeiras municipality said the group had not asked for permission to put it up but that both parties were now in touch and that the billboard would be restored.
“We have never practiced censorship and we never will,” the municipality said. “This was a regrettable episode, which tarnished the just and worthy cause of defending victims of pedophilia.”
This Is Our Memorial group said it continued to question the legality of the removal and was now waiting for the reinstallation to be “carried out as promised”.
Francis, who will be in Portugal until Aug. 6, said on Wednesday the Church needed a “humble and ongoing purification” to deal with the “anguished cries” of victims of clerical sexual abuse, who he met privately at the Vatican embassy in Lisbon.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Deepa Babington)
