Employee at Catholic School for Disabled Children in Pope's Former Diocese Convicted of Sex Abuse

Pope Francis delivers the Regina Caeli prayer in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, 23 April 2017. ANSA/ MASSIMO PERCOSSI (ANSA via AP)

Jorge Bordón, an employee of the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf in Argentina, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the horrific sex abuse scandal at the Catholic school for disabled children, according to Italian media source Mendoza Post. “Bordón, arrested since the beginning of the case, agreed to an abbreviated trial where he admitted to being guilty and the Justice condemned him on Tuesday for ‘sexual abuse and corruption of minors,'” according to the report.

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Bordon was arrested and tried for crimes ABC reported as “shocking.”

The clerical sex abuse scandal unfolding at the Antonio Provolo Institute for hearing impaired children in Mendoza province would be shocking enough on its own. Except that dozens of students in the Provolo Institute’s school in Italy were similarly abused for decades, some of whom allegedly by the same priest who now stands formally charged of raping and molesting young deaf Argentines.

And the Vatican knew about the Rev. Nicola Corradi since at least 2009, when the Italian Provolo students went public with tales of shocking abuse against the most vulnerable of children and named names. While the Vatican ordered an investigation and sanctioned four accused priests, Corradi apparently never was sanctioned for his alleged crimes in Italy.

Corradi was also arrested and is awaiting trial. Another priest, Don Piccoli, who confessed on camera to raping and molesting boys at the Provolo school, has not been charged and is a guest at a Vatican facility in Negrar near Verona. Last month the school was raided by Argentine police and a nun, Kosaka Kumiko, was also arrested in connection with the abuse that occurred. According to witness statements, the nuns of Gresner, an adjacent abbey, accompanied the children to confession where the brutal rapes occurred.

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The Provolo Institute is in Pope Francis’s former diocese and the abuse occurred while he was the bishop. Survivors tried to meet with him about the abuse when he was the bishop and then again multiple times when he became pope. Their pleas were ignored, including a letter informing him that Nicola Corradi was still abusing children in 2014. They received only a short reply that it would be turned over to internal Vatican investigators. Corradi was not removed from the school until he was led out in handcuffs by police in 2016 as a result of victims coming forward to authorities.

But at least 24 students of the Provolo institute in Argentina have now come forward seeking justice for the abuse they say they suffered at the hands of Corradi, 82, another priest, the Rev. Horacio Corbacho, 55, and three other men. The five were arrested in late November by police who raided the school in Argentina’s Mendoza province and found magazines featuring naked women and about $34,000 in Corradi’s room.

Catholics around the world grow angrier each day the pope remains silent about why he never acted to stop these terrible abuses after being informed so many times over many years. Instead of leading the church in a major clean-up effort and opening records to the public, the pope is dodging questions and refusing to tell the faithful the truth. Even Jesuit America magazine, which is normally ebullient in its praise of him, has called for Pope Francis to break his silence. “However, Pope Francis has been too slow to understand and act on the moral and spiritual consequences of abuse… silence makes things worse and is not an option for any of us,” they wrote.

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