Italian police said Monday that they had arrested a priest suspected of sexual crimes against a minor in the southern region of Calabria.
Police said the priest from a parish in Cosenza, whose identity and age were not disclosed, was arrested after a “complex investigation”.
The alleged abuse against a 16-year-old boy attending activities organised by the Church began in 2015 and lasted until 2020, after he turned of age, police said.
The suspect took advantage of a difficult family situation experienced by the minor, they said.
The priest “established an ambiguous relationship, initially fuelled by flattery and attention, which then degenerated into episodes of actual sexual violence, committed in secluded areas of the ecclesiastical structure”, a police statement said.
He “used his position to emotionally manipulate the boy, making him feel spiritually and morally bound to his ‘spiritual father'”.
It also said the priest would “give the victim a blessing” after sexual acts.
His arrest came a few months after the arrest of another priest, age 48, who allegedly abused children aged 10 to 12 in Italy’s north.
Statistics of such episodes are hard to come by in majority-Catholic Italy, where the Church remains highly influential.
Unlike other countries that have conducted investigations into clerical abuse scandals, Italy has not carried out such work on a national level.
The Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) published an initial report in 2022 covering only two years, an effort deemed largely insufficient by victims groups.
In January, the diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone, covering the northeastern region of South Tyrol, published what was considered the first independent study, documenting 60 episodes of sexual abuse by priests since 1964.
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