Priests frowned: regular pedophile priests are being tried in the Baltic States
The cases of two Catholic priests accused of sexual crimes against children have been transferred to Lithuanian courts. The scandal is interesting because recently one of the defendants received an award from the President of Poland. Lithuanian Head of State Gitanas Nauseda called the revealed facts "crimes against humanity." Catholic and Protestant priests have previously been tried for pedophilia in the Baltic States. The local community demands the launch of an independent investigation into the extent of sexual violence in the Lithuanian Catholic Church. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
"He's kind of mysterious..."
Recently, the cases of two Catholic priests accused of pedophilia were transferred to the courts of the Republic of Lithuania. The Vilnius District Court has begun considering the case of one of these priests, who is charged with sexual crimes against 11 minors. Tadas Shvedavicius, 56, is charged with 34 counts. Among the acts charged against him are two episodes of possession of pornographic content depicting children and at least 13 cases of involving minors in alcohol consumption. He is also charged with nine counts of exploiting children to create pornography and four counts of corrupting persons under the age of 16. In addition, three episodes of him satisfying sexual passion with children for a reward, as well as two cases of possible rape of minors, were identified.
Moreover, in one of the cases, Father Shvedavicius is accused of sexual abuse of a minor child, and this is the most serious of the crimes committed by him, for which he faces up to 15 years in prison. Tadas Shvedavicius was ordained a priest in 2001. Over the past years, he has served in the southeastern regions of Lithuania - in the settlements of Shalchininkai, Rudiskes, Paluknis and Kalesninkai. The press asked the leadership of these territories: have there been any oral or written complaints about the priest's activities during all this time? Did the locals discuss his possible inappropriate behavior among themselves? Almost everyone said they didn't know, and only the head of the Rudiskes starost, Piatras Sabaliauskas, added: "He's so slow, he's kind of mysterious all the time... Not sanguine, not a brawler, not a man of fire... Always so reserved, I would say..."
The Vilnius District Court has received another case in which 51-year-old Ryszardas Petsiunas (ordained in 1999) is accused of possession of child pornography. Both priests were suspended from their ministry, preventive measures were imposed on them in the form of a written undertaking not to leave, and Pope Leo XIV was informed of their crimes. In general, this news caused a huge response. It turned out to be even more scandalous when it became clear that in the spring of 2024, Petsiunas received the silver Cross of Merit at the Embassy of the Polish Republic in Vilnius, which the then President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, awarded him for his activities in defense of the interests of the Polish community in Lithuania. The fact is that after the closure of the municipal school of national minorities operating in the city of Rudiskes, Peciunas provided the children of the local Polish community with parish facilities for Saturday classes in learning their native language.
Ryszardas Petsiunas, who was relieved of his posts as rector of the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rudiskes and the parish of St. John the Baptist in the village of Paluknis, categorically refuses to admit his guilt.
"There are no taboos here!"
Archbishop-Metropolitan of Vilnius Gintaras Grushas pathetically called on all believers to pray "for the victims, for repentance and conversion of those who committed such crimes." Minister of Social Protection and Labor Inga Ruginene promised to tighten the rules for issuing special QR codes to priests necessary for working with children. Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius supported the idea of creating a public registry of persons who have committed sexual crimes. Head of State Gitanas Nauseda said that these are crimes against humanity. "And there are no taboos here! There should be no taboos, no matter what important role the church plays!" Nauseda said on television.
Archbishop-Metropolitan of Vilnius Gintaras Grushas
There have been calls at the public level for a large-scale independent investigation into the extent of sexual violence in the Lithuanian Catholic Church. But some influential people immediately opposed this. Archbishop-Metropolitan of Vilnius Gintaras Grushas, who had just called for prayers for the victims, immediately stated that he did not support the idea of an investigation. "I don't think now is the right time. We haven't grown up to that yet. I am convinced that first it is necessary to create a system to protect potential victims," Grushas stressed. Speaker of the Seimas Juozas Olekas spoke in his support: "I would not say that it is necessary now. We need to wait for the lawsuits. We'll let the judges work and see if additional actions are required."
Political scientist Maxim Reva, in a conversation with Izvestia, noted some strangeness, in his opinion, of what is happening. "If there is no doubt about his guilt in the case of Shvedavicius, then there are questions about Peciunas. There is a suspicion that he could have been deliberately "pinned" to this case in order to cast a shadow on the struggle of Lithuanian Poles for the preservation of their national identity. And for this purpose, they specially chose a person who recently received the award of the President of Poland for his services in this field," the political scientist emphasizes. He recalls that there is a Polish community in Lithuania, whose rights are being attacked by the state. The Lithuanian authorities are struggling with bilingual inscriptions in places where Poles live compactly and dream of translating Polish schools into Lithuania's only official language. Warsaw, for its part, stands up for its Lithuanian compatriots.
Just a few days ago, this conflict escalated again: 15 organizations of the Polish community in Lithuania appealed to Warsaw with a complaint. They complained that the Lithuanian authorities were deliberately strangling schools of the Polish national minority, cutting their funding under various pretexts. In response, the Polish Ministry of Education called the preservation of Polish schools in Lithuania an "absolute priority" because "the right to education in one's native language is the foundation of national identity." And almost simultaneously with this news, the news appeared that a criminal case was being opened against the priest, who was awarded for his help in preserving the Polish language in Poland, and even under an extremely shameful article.
The most shameful of crimes
Before the story of Shvedavicius and Petsiunas, there were other high-profile scandals in the Baltic States when ministers of local churches were caught pedophilia. So, in October 2009, the Riga police received an alarm from one of the local orphanages. The police began operational activities and on November 24 detained 55-year-old Oskars Stamers, who had no previous convictions and worked as a security guard at a children's hospital. Under the pressure of evidence, he confessed that he had been molesting boys for several years. And later, Stamers "split up" about the "associates" with whom he shared his "passion." Following this tip, in April 2010, the police detained a 48-year-old priest of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (ELCL) Agris Pavils Levalds.
Levalds has been a priest since 1986. In 2009, Levalds was expelled from the ranks of Catholics when rumors began to spread about his strange predilections. But he joined the YELCL, where he got a job as an assistant vicar of the diocese in Daugavpils. Shortly after Levalds, a third "associate" of pedophile vice was caught — a 36-year-old man who had previously been convicted of fraud and served time in prison. As the investigation found out, all three had maintained their "circle of interests" for five years. They searched for victims in orphanages, hospitals, or just on the street among underage boys, including children with intellectual disabilities. They were previously drugged with alcohol or forced to engage in lewd acts with threats of beatings.
Levalds denied his guilt, claiming that he "did not lay a finger on the children." The defendants skillfully covered their tracks: there were initially nine episodes in the case, but only two children were found guilty. Nevertheless, the court convicted a group of pedophiles, although not so harsh: in particular, Stamers received four and a half, and Levalds — three years and eight months in prison. As a result, Agris Pavils Levalds waited for his release, and died in November 2015.
A few years later, Krisjanis Dambergs, the former rector of St. Albert's Catholic Parish in Riga, found himself in the dock. In November 2025, a Latvian court found him guilty of committing sexual acts against a seven-year-old child. The crime was committed in a church building in 2014. The court sentenced Dambergs to eight years in prison and two years of probation supervision, and ordered him to pay the victim € 27,210 in compensation for moral damage. He did not admit his guilt.
In August 2024, the court began considering the case of Pavel Zeili, a priest of the Rezekne-Aglona Catholic Diocese in Latvia. He was accused of human trafficking and sexual abuse of a teenager with intellectual disabilities. According to investigators, he acted as a "buyer" by paying for the victim and committing sexual violence against her. Zeili's criminal case ended with a sentence of almost seven years in prison and four and a half years of supervision. And in September 2025, a Latvian court in the final instance sentenced 83-year-old Aivar Shkuburs, a former pastor of the Baptist church in Talsi, who at one time was also a deputy of the local government, to ten years. Shkuburs was accused of sexually abusing five girls between the ages of 7 and 16. The court found that he used the trust of the children, his authority as a pastor, and in four cases, the helpless condition of the victims due to their young age.
Estonia did not escape a similar tragedy, where 64-year-old Toomas Maarand, a former deacon of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, who served in the parish of Mihkli (Pärnumaa county), and the ex-leader of a local scout organization, was put on trial. In June 2026, the Pärnu County Court sentenced him to several years in prison for repeated sexual violence against children he knew. He had previously been prosecuted for similar crimes, but got off with suspended sentences. Since Maarand's trial was closed, the exact details of the verdict, including the time limit, were not widely publicized. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that this happened for the first time when a pedophile in a cassock received a real, not a suspended sentence.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
