MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paternity claims shed light on President Lugo’s exit from the Church

Lugo overwhelmed by a growing family

A third woman in two weeks has claimed that Paraguay's President Fernando Lugo fathered her child, intensifying a political scandal that has made him the target of acid jokes, graffiti and a pop song. However in this last case the 39 year old teacher said she was “deeply in love” with the former bishop.

This last case is also helping understand Fernando Lugo’s exit circumstances from the Church which put him on track for the Paraguayan presidency on his alleged record as the dedicated “bishop of the poor”.

Damiana Hortencia Moran told local media that Lugo was the father of her 18 month-old son, conceived in 2006 after he had left the church for politics. She described her relation with Lugo as “unconditional love” and said she was not interested in damaging the image of the president since she had great trust in him and his ability to transform Paraguay, one of Latinamerica’s poorest and most corrupt countries.

Ms Moran is closely linked to the Church and worked as a militant for the catch-all coalition that helped the former bishop become president. Her child was named John Paul after the late Pope.

“I decided the country was first and preferred to walk away. I didn’t want my pregnancy to become an embarrassment, so I never told him. I didn’t want to distract him from the transformations this country needs and we are all hopeful to see”, Ms Moran confessed to the Asuncion press. She again reiterated her love for Mr. Lugo.

Her confession comes two days after going public a second woman, Benigna Leguizamon, 27, who filed a lawsuit to get Mr Lugo to take a DNA test to prove he is the father of her six-year-old boy.

Earlier this month, Viviana Carrillo, 26, stunned Paraguayans when she revealed that Mr Lugo, known as the “bishop of the poor” before he quit the Church in late 2006 to run for President, was the father of her son, who is almost two. The President recognised Ms Carrillo's boy as his son and even remarked that they looked alike, but he has not accepted or denied paternity in the two newer cases.

Ms Moran said she went public so the truth should be known, because even when it’s a delicate and highly sensitive issue for her, “sooner or later it would have been known”. She also underlined that in the current process of change that Paraguay is experiencing “telling the truth to the people, to the country, is part of the promise that was done and for which the people responded”.

Many Paraguayans believe President Lugo was brave to admit paternity in the first case, and women in his cabinet defended the 58 year-old leader even though Ms Carrillo claimed she started having sex with Lugo when she was 16, below the legal age of consent in Paraguay.

Opposition politicians from the conservative Colorado Party, in power for decades before Mr Lugo's victory, railed that the President was a national embarrassment and not trustworthy, but analysts said the political damage would be light.

However the paternity claims shed light on Mr. Lugo’s controversial exit from the Catholic Church. Fellow Bishop Bishop Rogelio Livieres alleged that the church was aware of possible abuse of authority by Lugo, but allowed him to resign without making the complaints public, thus facilitating his bid for the presidency.

“The church hierarchy knew for years of this misconduct by Lugo, but kept silent. Now there's nothing that it can do” Livieres said in an interview.

The Paraguayan bishops' conference wrote in a statement Wednesday that it had never received “formal written complaints” from women about Lugo, and that it “laments and rejects” the claim that the church in Paraguay covered up immoral conduct.

“Many knew about Lugo's misbehaviour. The whole world knew it. Many sectors are aware of the facts” according to Monsignor Livieres. “The church failed when it did not speak more clearly. It's a cover-up of sorts.”

Lugo's resignation in 2004 as bishop of San Pedro province was never fully explained. It wasn't until December 2006 that he renounced his bishop status to run for president, and Pope Benedict XVI didn't accept his resignation, relieving him of chastity vows, until weeks before he took office in August 2008.