Preventively “remove from the exercise of functions or pastoral responsibilities to be removed”. The President of the Republic has no doubts that precautions should be taken – “and the sooner the better” – in case of suspicions of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Explanation? “It’s such an obvious issue, so obvious, such an obvious issue of prevention and taking precautions to protect potential new victims and protect those ultimately affected, that I think careful reflection will lead to doing what at first, incomprehensible to me, was not done”.
In Gondomar, on the sidelines of the extraordinary congress of the Portuguese Fire Brigade Federation, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa insisted: “there are things that need to be done and the sooner the better”
Solutions? The first immediate measure is “don’t spend more time on something that can’t be wasted”; “Second, take full responsibility”; “Third, to take preventive measures, which involves removing those to be removed by these preventive measures from exercising functions or pastoral responsibilities and demonstrating the will to rehabilitate the victims”.
But it doesn’t stop there, because “it’s clear that the concern about the future has to be there because it’s a national problem.”
In the report, the Independent Commission for the Study of Child Sexual Abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church warned that the data collected in church records on the occurrence of sexual abuse should be taken as the “tip of the iceberg”.
“Be honest [já não é] deadly”
Together with a minister of the “warmed up” and “tired majority”, Marcelo decided to confess that he “sincerely” did not know, as he underlined, if “it’s good that the president of the republic is so sincere, I think it creates more enemies than friends”. But finally he concluded: sincerity does not kill, for time is on the president’s side: “two and a half years from the end of [ser sincero] it’s not deadly”.
It was in Gondomar, at the firefighting congress, which started on Saturday and ends on Sunday, and when the Minister of the Interior, José Luís Carneiro, sat at the table, Marcelo confessed that he looked at ANEPC with suspicion. [Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil ]created by Antonio Costa.
“I was not then an admirer of the creation of ANEPC. Because it was a new reality that did not enter my mental universe. It was seen this way: now a structure appears that will rule over us [referindo-se aos bombeiros]. Does she understand us? Does she love us as much as we love our mission? Will we not be forever marginalized by the structure? (…) You too [bombeiros] they wondered: aren’t there more chiefs than Indians? We the Indians and they the chieftains?
After the doubts, the “sincere” confession, as he called it, about what happened. “But the reality is that ANEPC was formed and several entities had to coexist, all with very important functions,” he stated.
And shortly afterwards new doubts, because when the firefighters are together, it is “because they are concerned”.
“People will say: but how do you worry when there is a minister of the interior who I am sure will do everything possible to find the solution to what worries you? They worry because they know what the daily work is. They know about the difficulties of daily life. They are not only yours, but they are very much yours (…) The day when there were no more strong firefighters rooted in local communities, local communities would die,” he warned.
Doubts, warnings, confessions and a finding the president would like to see put right. The survival and sustainability of humanitarian organizations depends on “timely support”. And on time, it’s right on time, he insisted, because “the support that arrives months later is no longer support. It’s almost support.”
TAP and the “conviction”
“I always thought,” the president assured, “that the main purpose of the restructuring is to prepare for privatization (…) that TAP’s privatization process is very important”. for the divergence between the two, the optimist and the annoying optimist” and to whom Costa recently “Asian patience” – he said he was not an “excessive optimist” but believed “that what was unfortunately not possible to close in March 2020 due to the pandemic could be feasible to close in the shortest possible time”.
In one sentence: “I am convinced that there will be interested people”.
And the news that former CEO of TAP, Christine Ourmières-Widener, is preparing to claim more than three million euros in damages for the payment of wages and a bonus to which she would be entitled until the end of her contract?
Silence. The president decided not to respond, responding that “it is very important for Portugal and for the Portuguese who have contributed their money for so many years, the end of a process that should end soon”. Or as he had said fifteen minutes earlier: “In the shortest possible time”.
“It’s reasonable to inspect, but…”
Asked about the news of Emphatically that the government is studying legislative changes to limit profit margins, Marcelo had no doubts: “With regard to excessive and unjustified use in all products, especially in basic resources, this is very fair”. However, he warned: “relative to the rest, it is necessary to know the ideas in detail”.
Expresso ensures that the government studies various measures and does not exclude, for example – even if it is exceptional and temporary – a limit to the profit margins of producers, industrialists and distributors.
“The main thing is to have the idea that it is not legitimate that, in addition to what inflation is caused by external costs and internal consequences, there are those who abuse it for speculative purposes. This needs to be checked and this is a concern that even the government has already expressed,” said Marcelo.
Source: DN
