Remember the victims so that no one forgets the abuses carried out by members of the Catholic Church: this is the request of the group ThisIsOurMemorial, which will place three posters in Lisbon, Oeiras and Loures this week, where, with the colors of WYD, you can read “4800+ children abused by the Catholic Church in Portugal”.
The idea for the posters came about in connection with the memorial to victims of abuse, which, just four months after being announced in March, would end up postponed and not have a presence at WYD, something the group sees as silencing abuse.
In a conversation with JN, Telma Tavares, a member of this group, says that the posters aim to “make pilgrims [of World Youth Day (WYD)] aware of what happened and share the data” of the report published on February 13, 2023 by the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuses against Children in the Portuguese Catholic Church, which confirmed more than 4800 cases of sexual abuse of minors by members of the Church.
The group states on its website that “nothing can fix or repair the experience and lives of these more than 4800 victims”, what can and should be done “is to remember them. Give them a voice. So that what happened will never happen again”. They argue that we cannot “give voice to silence so that we can then insist on silencing the victims of abuse again”.
Fundraising
With a white background and the colors of WYD – red, yellow and green – the highlight of the posters is the number 4800, pointed out as the number of victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church in the last 70 years. It will be in red and in the form of dots, to show the magnitude of the number.
With the name “This is our memorial”, the group intends to show that, although the official memorial has been postponed, they will not forget the victims and this is their memorial. Thus, the group intends to denounce “the deafening silence”, “fight against the erasure of the victims from the media agenda, focused on the celebration of the institution that consigns them to silence” and “bring to the light of day what they want to remain behind a closed door and a patronizing smile”. They ask that the Portuguese population does not forget the victims and the cover-up of abuse cases.
With almost 300 supporters on a money-raising platform, the group managed to raise the money needed for a poster in just two and a half hours. The next day the amount doubled to a total of €226, so they invested in a second poster, and later a third. The printing of the three posters is expected to cost 2655 euros.