A Brazilian priest who specializes in psychological and pastoral approaches to preventing suicide and self-harm is raising the alarm at the Vatican following the suicides of at least 40 priests in Brazil over the past seven years.
Loneliness, stress and excessive demands are driving priests to kill themselves, concludes Fr. Lício de Araújo Vale, from the diocese of São Miguel Paulista, after his extensive research into the ministries of the 40 priests who took their own lives between 2016 and 2023.
Several priests who committed suicide were accused of sexual abuse, a key factor Fr. Vale omits to mention in his article titled “The Suicide of Priests in Brazil,” published in the Portuguese edition of Vatican News on July 27.
In fact, the first priest Vale named was Fr. Bonifácio Buzzi, a 57-year-old Brazilian priest who hanged himself in his solitary confinement prison cell using bed sheets at the Tres Coracoes prison in the state of Minas Gerais.
Buzzi was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2007 for the rape of a 9-year-old boy six years earlier.
In 2015, he was released from prison and other complaints were filed against him. In 2016, he was rearrested for the rape of two other minors in the rural area of Tres Coracoes.
Father Vale’s research ends with the suicide of Fr. Mário Castro Ribeiro, a much-loved 55-year-old priest from the parish of São Francisco das Chagas in the diocese of Roraima. The diocese refused to reveal the cause of Fr. Ribeiro’s death.
In India, five priests committed suicide in just ten months between October 2019 and July 2020.