The Portuguese priest who comforted Gerry and Kate McCann in the days after Madeleine vanished last night said he had been deceived, it has emerged.
According to reports, Father Jose Manuel Pacheco claimed he had done nothing wrong and was simply "supporting two lost souls."
But, bizarrely, he also appeared to say he had been the victim of some form of deception.
It has also emerged Father Pacheco was apparently called in to see his superior, Algarve Bishop Manuel Quintas and warned about his behaviour.
In the days after Madeleine vanished on May 3, the McCanns, both 39 and devout Catholics, frequently sought refuge at the priest's church.
They became so close to Father Pacheco, he gave them the keys to the tiny building so they could go in to pray whenever they liked.
However, his friendship with the couple appeared to spectacularly backfire after police became convinced Kate had told him she had killed her daughter during confession.
But he has vowed to take whatever she had said to the grave, despite being quizzed by detectives.
Father Pacheco appeared to virtually vanish from the public eye in the weeks after Gerry and Kate were made arguidos - or official suspects.
The pair left Portugal without saying goodbye and handed the church keys to another clergyman.
Last week, police moved in to search the churchyard and there has been some suggestion that they may consider digging for Madeleine's body at the location.
Father Pacheco, runs two churches and teaches at three local schools, yesterday broke his silence.
According to the Daily Express, he admitted he had become too close to the couple, still official suspects in the disappearance of their daughter.
"I was deceived," he said.
"I was just doing my job supporting lost souls. I would do that with any family who were in their situation. I didn't do anything wrong.
Father Pacheco, 46, said he had felt compelled to help Kate and Gerry because of their "inconsolable grief".
MailOnline
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The Secret Visits of the McCanns to the Church of Luz
by Joana Morais---3 years ago
Announced visits and other secret, keys provided against the wishes of the Bishop, the priest wife agitated, finished constructions and searches never made. What is it that the church of Praia da Luz has?
by Hernâni Carvalho
On the night of their daughter's disappearance, the McCann couple asked for a priest. The priest of the Luz church, José Pacheco, did not respond. The couple knew, even before they had gone to Praia da Luz, that the Anglican priest Haynes Hubbard celebrated masses there and lived with his wife. He had a friendship with McCann's family members. It was with him whom they spoke with. Some days later, Gerry and Kate received the church keys, and since then they were able to enter and leave at any time. A situation that was criticized by the Bishop of the Algarve at the time. When questioned on this discretionary act, the priest José Pacheco said: "Do I decide that?!"
McCanns visited the church in secret
"Although our pain feels much rawer here, it is comforting at the same time since we feel closer to Madeleine - we can read in a press statement sent to Lusa news agency in 12th December 2009, by the McCann's Portuguese PR, in connection to the couple's visit to the church. During the day, the visits were announced and followed by the media. The exception was made in the early hours of January 14, 2010 [issues with date/see references bellow]. At 5am they were seen and photographed leaving the church from a side door. In the afternoon they gave a press conference.
Wife of Priest worried
The forensic psychologist Paulo Sargento asked the bishop of the Algarve Dom Manuel Quintas, if any catholic can go to the church at any time.
Hernâni Carvalho - How did you get to talk with the bishop?
Paulo Sargento - I sent a registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt early on, in January 2010. Since I got no reply, about a month later, I sent an e-mail with the questions that I had. Four days later, it was the Bishop himself who replied, also by e-mail, apologizing for the delay in the answer. A hearing was scheduled for two or three days later.
Hernâni Carvalho - And you felt clarified?
Paulo Sargento - The hearing took place in February, at the episcopal see of Faro. The Bishop received me kindly. We talked about an hour. I had already been informed about a McCann visit to the church in the early hours and wondered if the Bishop was aware of that and I also wished to understand if any other catholic could do the same. Dom Manuel Quintas confirmed the McCanns had indeed been in the church on that day at 5am, that the person who had given them the key that night was Susan Hubbard, the wife of the Anglican priest, who had a key to the church at all times since her husband celebrated the Anglican mass there. Susan assured the Bishop the McCanns wanted to pray without being harassed by the media. However, the Bishop told me: “I don't understand, that day at 17pm there was a mass where they went, surrounded by the media”. Dom Manuel Quintas also added that when Susan Hubbard found out about my hearing request, she got scared and inclusively, sought him, very worried. The Bishop told me that he answered her queries saying that she should not be so worried if nothing unusual or wrong had happened.
Hernâni Carvalho - Did the Bishop avoid discussing any issues?
Paulo Sargento - No. I'm not going to give you details, but the Bishop was very open and did not flinch at anything I asked to him. He was willing, even, to resume contact for further questions or more information I needed. Interestingly, in that summer (2010), Kate spent a week vacation in Canada, in the house of a family member of Susan Hubbard, the wife of the priest.
Construction Works
Back in 2007, the public area of the Village of Luz had been for months undergoing sanitation improvements and road works. Behind the church there were ongoing construction works. Being a place of worship, various legal issues hampered a search there. At the time, PJ sources admitted to the possibility that the girl's body could have passed through that location, or even, to have been buried in the deactivated cemetery.
End of page 98
The Big Bluff
The British police came to Portugal to investigate the Maddie case. They dug and went into the sewers looking for a dead girl or clues that could lead to her whereabouts. The PJ had said the very same and had done those searches seven years ago.
“A movie for the English to see”, said an elderly lady, mockingly, to CMTV recently. One and a half year ago the English police announced that they would find the girl in a few days. So far nothing. Scotland Yard's work in Portugal is discussed by all in a very critical way. “They haven't done anything that our PJ hasn't done years ago”, stated a Portuguese in the same area. The searches are causing discontent among tourists and locals as they consider them detrimental to tourism, now that the peak season begins.
Show Off
The British police wanted the searches to be accompanied by the media but the PJ refused. Since the 2nd of June, Praia da Luz in Lagos has a large team of policemen, geologists, archaeologists, cutting edge technology and also sniffer dogs. They all come from England “under the supervision of PJ and the Public Prosecutor Office”. In addition there are PJ inspectors, GNR military officers on foot and horseback and Portuguese forest sappers. A setting worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster movie.
Stones, socks and bottles
The searches and excavations of the English police in Luz highlights the acknowledgement that they are looking for a body. The PJ had reached that same conclusion seven years ago. The English police began by excavating a field near Rua 25 de Abril, 600 meters away from the apartment from where the girl disappeared. An area equal to three football fields, a slope hill, which belongs to the Belmiro de Azevedo Group [SONAE] and is frequented by locals and tourists for leisurely walks. They collected animal bones, two cannabis plants, stones, soil samples, a sock and bottles and kept everything in boxes.
Nothing
There are no findings to sustain the theory of the British authorities. They argue that Maddie's body is in that place or that there are clues that may lead to her whereabouts. They also claim that they have a group of eight suspects(?). Explaining that they have extended the searches because they have concluded (only now?) that the terrain is more difficult to analyse than predicted. These places had already been thoroughly searched by the Portuguese police immediately after the disappearance of the girl. In fact, until September 11, 2007, the PJ had investigated over 2500 false leads.
Millions of Euros
The 37 officers of the London Metropolitan Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine have cost the British Crown about 6 million pounds (7.4 million euros). Besides the first investigation, Portugal has had a team of six inspectors of the PJ in Faro, for months, just to carry out the the steps requested by the British and another team of inspectors from the Northern Directorate of PJ, doing a review of the first investigation for the last two years. No one has, so far, established the total cost to our country. The McCanns moved in early July 2007 for the Villa Vista Mar. At the average values of the property market at the time, the total rent was calculated to have surpassed 6000 euros. The Renault Scénic where biological traces were found, allegedly belonging to Maddie, was rented for 113 days, at the list price it costed 7990 euros.
Maddie
3 May 2007
In Praia da Luz in the Algarve, the parents of Madeleine, who would be four years old just a few days later, cried "abduction" when they noticed Maddie had disappeared from the apartment where they had left her alone with her younger twin siblings. "Homicide", said the PJ a few days later. After a lot of press, suspects, searches, investigations to everyone's taste and seven years later, there is nothing.
in TVMais magazine, Nº1117, 13 to 19 June 2014, paper edition, pages 98 & 99 - with many thanks to Maria
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Holy Trinity
by May I
Friday, 17 December 2010
Listening to an early interview with Janet and Brian Kennedy, Kate McCanns’s aunt and uncle, a helpful priest was mentioned.
The name of the Anglican priest was David…. David? I didn’t remember a David. What I did recall was Father Pacheco, who gave the McCanns the keys to the Church of Nossa Senhora da Luz, most known as the PdL Church, and supposedly left a broken man, weighed down by the burden of Kate’s confession.
Then there was Haynes Hubbard and his wife, who arrived soon after Madeleine's disappearance, befriended the McCanns; to whom they returned the said keys.
I also remembered Paul Seddon, the Catholic priest who married the McCanns; an old golfing pal of Gerry. He was the priest Kate called on the night that Madeleine went missing. They spoke to him on the phone, according to an interview with The Tablet on June 16th, 2007.
It was in this interview the name of Father Pacheco is cleverly linked with Seddon’s name. They talked of him saying the rosary with them a later date; then, the article adds “The Parish Priest also gave the McCanns the keys to the Church so that they could pray there alone in the evenings.”
You see, it doesn’t say it was Father Pacheco, but it certainly implies it was to any reader. Father Pacheco’s statement of Oct 30th. 2007. gives a mixed message: “He (Father Pacheco) gave them the key to the church on the 7th or 8th of May, on the suggestion of John Geraghty, a resident of the parish, so that they could go calmly to church without any pressure. Someone from the Church gave the key to John Geraghty, who then passed it onto the McCanns with Father Pacheco’s permission.”
He does not remember the date upon which the key was returned. However, Father Pacheco later denied that he had made any decision to hand the keys to the McCanns. In an article dated Dec 13th, 2007, by Cecilia Pires, for The Algarve Resident, she writes: “Father Pacheco ensures that “Priest have no power to order anything in our churches. We have an entity for that, which is the Conselho Pastoral, where the catholic community is represented…………….With regards to the key to the Praia da Luz Church that the McCanns were given after Madeleine went missing…..”That was a decision made by the Conselho Pastoral and I only knew about it three days later "”
How many people were members of the Conselho Pastoral and how many were required to make this decision? Could it be that only one person made this decision?
David seems to have been airbrushed from history, often a sign that something interesting lurks.
The Reverend David W Heal was the priest at St Vincent’s; the Anglican name of the same church which was shared with the Catholic congregation.
According to reports in Correio da Manhã, Sep 19th, 2009: “The keys to the Church , which members of the parish decided to lend to the couple a few days after Madeleine’s disappearance…. were returned to the Anglican priest…who befriended the couple". However, Hubbard‘s comment on the returning of the keys was ambiguous “I agree that the parish decided to lend them the church keys” . He didn’t reveal it was to him that the couple returned the keys.”
The McCanns were reported to have handed the keys over without saying goodbye to Father Pacheco, so it certainly wasn’t him they were returned to. Even so, Father Pacheco seems to have been severely chastised by his superiors.
He denied taking confessions from the McCanns in his statement, so perhaps he left feeling used and abused. It’s hard to believe any burden he may have carried came from the unlikely event of confessions, but there may have been other reasons.
From what I know of the Catholic Faith, I’m certain that Kate would not have confessed to Father Pacheco. He would have told her that she could not be forgiven unless she confessed what had happened to the authorities.
Confession would have brought risk, not forgiveness. A few Hail Mary’s or a decade on the rosary would not be enough!
Unless she wanted to compromise him.
Russell O’Brian, in his rogatory interview, refers to David Priest -a comma between the words is required- and explains why David’s number, beginning 914, is on his mobile phone, immediately after that of Robert Murat.
It seems David, therefore, was the most likely person to have sought the agreement of the Conselho Pastoral. Was it also not more likely that the keys had passed between Geraghty and Heal? Fiona Payne and Rachael Mampilly/Oldfield comment on the perceived strangeness of Kate’s desperate need to speak to a priest in the midst of this maelstrom and seek to explain it in a vague manner.
It seems that concerns were expressed that the McCanns had called the media and a priest before they contacted the police. El Pais in Dec 07 “For the police, the most surprising thing was that the first concern of the parents was to alert the press before the police themselves. They were also struck by the fact that Kate asked the Ocean Club reception for the village priest’s telephone number.”
Why would they do that?
The following article in First Magazine (with thanks to Pamalan’s site) throws a very interesting spotlight on the involvement of David Heal: “With every squeeze of her daughter’s Cuddle Cat, anguished mother Kate McCann willed her little daughter home. Priest’s wife, Pam Heal helped Kate and Gerry through the early, terrifying hours of Madeleine’s disappearance…. “Someone’s taken Madeleine, someone’s taken Madeleine” she wailed over and over again, said Pam. Kate kept playing with the toy. She said Madeleine had definitely been taken from them because she would never go anywhere without her favourite toy. The night Madeleine disappeared, Kate and Gerry telephoned the local Anglican priest, Father David Heal, asking him to visit them at their apartment…..When he arrived with his wife, 38 year old Kate threw herself into the priest’s arms as she broke down. It took him 3 hours to comfort Kate.”
There are no statements from the Heals in the available PJ files, in spite of their KEY roles in the early hours of Madeleine’s disappearance.
References to the Heals’ involvement refer to the McCanns contacting them on Friday. The Mail, on Sunday reports “Reverend Heal was called to meet the McCann family on Friday.”
Well, that would be partly true, if the Heals had arrived around 10 p.m. and had remained at the apartment for 3 hours. None of the T9 mentions the Heals’ visit in their interviews and they quickly disappear from the media radar.
Father Heal did continue to conduct services at St Vincent’s, although one report suggests that he may have been leaving the next day.
During a service held later in the week Father Heal’s sermon included the following observations “Whatever happens today, whatever happens tomorrow, whatever happens in the days ahead, after this week, life will never be the same again……. We have all been changed and we have all been changed forever.” (Mail on Sunday)
Thanks to The Maddie Case File for newspaper archives. References refer to key and keys. I don’t know if there was more than one.
Pictures of Father David Heal, from Pamalam:
Also from Pamalam:
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McCann Case: 'The British Priest Staged Everything'
by Joana Morais---8 years ago
We went to Praia da Luz to speak with Father José Manuel – the priest of the local church – who accompanied all the sequence of events, lived after the disappearance of the English girl. Refuting all knowledge regarding the whereabouts of the blanket, the Father also denies the insinuations against his past.
Have you participated in all of the British community celebrations?
-In all.
- I participated, but I don’t know anything. The British priest, called by Madeleine parents, it was him who celebrated all the masses. In that context, the only thing that I could do for her was to pray. The other priest is the one who knows a lot – and he staged everything – it was him who made statements and who spoke to the PJ.
But, where could Maddie’s blanket be?
-It would be good to know, it’s possible that the other priest and the PJ know.
The PJ doesn’t know. Does that mean that they have ‘lost’ the evidence?
- I don’t know anything; I only know that, when everything was too ‘hot’, various stories were told, badly told and even more about me: that I was ‘exiled’ to the Vatican to speak with the Pope… Just because I missed 2 or three days, I was made an ‘exiled’.
Was it normal to hand out the church keys?
- It’s not me who decides. [silence]
There are some who have accused you of, when you where at the Gaia Seminary, having participated in act of harassment and sexual abuse.
- It’s all a lie; the media have nothing else to do. It is easy to attack the image of a priest. But, at this moment the defamers are being sued.
in Semanário Privado, 1 July 2009 - Paper Editon Only
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When the parents of Madeleine McCann flew out to Rome to visit the Pope, the world's media applauded the couple's unwavering faith and the graciousness of His Holiness in extending his hand to these grief-stricken parents in their time of greatest need. Pope Benedict XVI received Kate and Gerry McCann at the Vatican, blessed them, and assured them they were in his prayers.
You see, God's representative on Earth will always stand by his flock when the greatest tragedy befalls them. Unless, of course, suspicion should fall on them, in which case it becomes necessary to preempt a PR disaster. Apparently ignoring the worldly notion of innocent until proven guilty, the Vatican has removed all mention of the Pope's meeting with the McCanns from its website, just in case. As if it wasn't bad enough having the world's media turn on them amid a sea of speculation and unfounded rumour, the McCanns now seem to have been abandoned by the leader of their own religion. How very Christian of him.
Posted by New Humanist at Wednesday, September 19, 2007
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