MADRID — José Napoleón Lemus assures that he knows at least 50 other victims of Father Giuseppe Corò, with whom he has been able to contact over two decades.

More than two decades have passed since José Napoleón Lemus left El Salvador to try to forget a pain that, at the time, no one wanted to hear. Today, with evidence in hand, with a case of abuse accepted by the Salesian congregation, he seeks justice in his country. It was 1985 and he was studying his baccalaureate at the Ricaldone Technical Institute, in San Salvador, a Catholic institution under the tutelage of the Salesian congregation.

Lemus was a boy with learning disabilities, who many years later discovered that it was dyslexia. By the end of 1985, his educational problems had escalated and affected him greatly. The Italian Salesian priest, Giuseppe Corò, was the rector of the institution and also taught two subjects, religion and sex education, “ironically,” says this Salvadoran.

“He had a good friendship with Father Corò, and he privately interacted with me and quickly told me that if I ever needed help, to seek it out; its doors were open whenever he wanted. I took this gesture as a sign of friendship and began to see him as a second father,” Lemus recounts in a letter he wrote in 2019, where he narrated the abuse.

At the end of the year, in November 1985, Father Corò asked him to meet him, after 6:00 in the afternoon, at the school. The priest gave him directions on how to enter and that the security agents would let him pass.

Upon entering, Lemus relates that the priest took him and began to touch and kiss him. “I was paralyzed,” he said. In an interview with Diario El Mundo, Lemus said that the priest tried to bribe him: “They were words that I will never forget again in my life: ‘If you come at least once a month, you don’t have to worry about studying again.’ It was a sexual bribe in the sense that I could graduate. And I never went back to school,” said this Salvadoran living in Canada.

José left school and that same day he told his mother what had happened. “My mom didn’t believe it. My mom thought it was an excuse that I didn’t want to study,” years later, under pressure not to continue studying and in the midst of being recruited in the armed conflict, Lemus left El Salvador, traveled to the United States and later to Canada, which has been his home for decades.

“I have avoided arriving in El Salvador all my life,” he tells Diario El Mundo in a phone call, acknowledging that he still has nightmares about returning to the country and that this child, whose childhood was stolen, still screams in pain.

A decree and a “rebuke”

But this story is not only recorded in a letter, after seeking help and that all doors will be closed to him, in 2019, the Vice Province “Mary Seat of Wisdom” in Rome, Italy, a special circumscription of the Salesian Congregation at the global level, decided to listen to him, sent representatives to his place of residence in Canada and was heard in a long conversation. Although José recognizes that the Salesians who visited him were only looking to prove that everything was false, a year later, in February 2020, he received a letter from the superior of the Vice Province agreeing with him.

It is a decree signed by the Salesian rector, Fr Eugenio Riva, where he refers to a preliminary investigation initiated against the Reverend Giuseppe Corò, accused of crimes “more serious things against sexto” (crimes against the sixth commandment, which according to the Bible dictates to believers: “You shall not commit impure acts”).

That decree concludes that the cleric Giuseppe Corò committed the abuses, although he does not use the term, and that the age of the victims at the time of the events was considered. The document ends by saying that appropriate canonical sanctions were decreed against the Italian priest, on February 12, 2020, in relation to his religious life and priestly ministry.

The document cites the Code of Canon Law, Canon 1339 §2, which consists of “rebuking anyone who causes scandal or grave disturbance.”

“The father who is rector of it (Giuseppe Corò), where he is retired, sent me a written apology and told me that they were going to collaborate with me. And the rector also, who is the rector of the Salesians in Central America, was the one who approved the psychological help that I was having for three years here in Canada,” Lemus said.

Read the entire original story in Spanish