Nobel Peace Prize-winning bishop accused of sexual abuse of teenagers, says magazine

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo was accused of having sexually abused underage boys. In a report published this Wednesday (28) in the Dutch magazine “De Groene Amsterdammer”, the result of an investigation of the vehicle, Paulo (not his real name) reports that the religious took off his pants and performed oral sex on him. Another man, identified only as Roberto, claims to have been raped.

The episodes would have taken place at the bishop’s house in Dili, East Timor, in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the report. Paulo was around 15 years old and Roberto, 14. The alleged victims, who lived in extreme poverty, report that they still received money from Belo after the sexual acts.

The report claims to have also spoken with other victims who were allegedly abused by the religious and with people with knowledge of the case: government officials, politicians, NGO employees and representatives of the Catholic Church.

When approached by the magazine for comment on the allegations, the bishop reached out to pick up the phone but immediately hung up, according to the report. After publication, the Vatican said it would investigate the allegations.

“We were afraid to talk about it. We were afraid to pass on the information,” Paulo said, adding that the Catholic leader was abusing his position of power. According to Roberto, the money the religious gave him was for him to keep his mouth shut.

Bishop of the Salesian Congregation, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo won the Nobel when he was 48 years old and has defended human rights for more than ten years in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony occupied by Indonesia after its independence in 1975. At the time of the award, he was “not only the powerful head of the Roman Catholic Church of East Timor, but also a national hero and a beacon of hope for the people,” the report says.

Roberto, one of the victims, told the report that he had lost several relatives due to the violent occupation of Indonesia, which lasted from 1975 to 1999 – in those years, about 183,000 Timorese died of hunger, disease and exhaustion. In this context, the Catholic Church was highly respected in East Timor both for its religious role and as an institution that helped the people and offered protection.

Belo is now 74 years old and lives in Portugal. He resigned from his position as bishop in the early 2000s, claiming he suffered from mental and physical fatigue, and years later took up the post of assistant priest in Maputo, Mozambique, a less prestigious job in the church hierarchy.

The religious needs a permit to travel, according to the report. Restraint is a measure taken by church authorities during the investigation of a case to protect the victims, the investigation, and the suspect. The church can also apply such restrictions after a guilty verdict.

This is the second controversy involving the Nobel Peace Prize in recent years. The award, which gives great moral prestige to recipients, came under fire last year after 2019 winner, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, ordered an attack on rebels in the northern Tigray region. The conflict, one of the biggest on the African continent, left more than 2 million homeless and an uncertain number of deaths, in the thousands.