Almost 5,000 children were sexually abused by members of the Portuguese Catholic Church - mostly priests - over the past 70 years, a commission investigating the issue said in its final report.
"(We want) to pay a sincere tribute to those who were abuse victims during their childhood and dared to give a voice to silence," said the head of the commission, child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht.
"They are much more than a statistic."
Most of the perpetrators - 77% - were priests and most of the victims were men, Dr Strecht said, adding that they were abused in Catholic schools, priests' homes, confessionals, among other locations.
Jose Ornelas, head of the Bishops' Conference, attended the final report's presentation and will react to it later today.
The Catholic Church has previously said it was prepared to "take appropriate measures".
The Portuguese commission started its work in January last year after a report in France revealed around 3,000 priests and religious officials sexually abused over 200,000 children.
The abuse allegations have come from people from various backgrounds, from every region of the country and also from Portuguese nationals living in other countries in Europe, Africa and the Americas.
The commission, which says it is independent, was financed by the Catholic Church.
In October, the team of six experts said it had recorded 424 legitimate accounts from presumed victims but warned that their testimony indicated the total number of victims was "much larger".
The accounts revealed "serious situations which persisted for decades ... and in some cases reached epidemic proportions", it said at the time.
The time limit for bringing charges has already expired for the vast majority of alleged offences, but 25 cases have been transferred to police and several inquiries have already been opened.
One of these rare cases concerns "Alexandra", a 43-year-old woman who has requested anonymity. She alleges she was raped by a priest during confession when she was a 17-year-old novice nun.
"It's very hard to talk about these things in Portugal", a country where 80% of people say they are Catholic, said Alexandra, who is now a mother, trained in IT and works as a kitchen helper.
"I kept it secret for many years but it became more and more difficult to cope with it alone," she told AFP in a telephone interview.
She eventually reported her attacker to the church authorities but said she was "ignored". The bishop in charge did nothing other than pass on her complaint to the Vatican, which has still not responded.
Three years on, she says she has found in the independent commission an understanding ear and the psychological support she needs.
In April last year, Manuel Clemente, the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon and the highest-ranking prelate in Portugal, said he was prepared to "recognise the errors of the past" and ask the victims for "forgiveness".
"Bishops asking forgiveness doesn't mean anything to me. We don't know if they mean it," said Alexandra, who said she felt "sickened" by the church and its cover-ups of sexual abuse.
Pope Francis, who is to visit Lisbon in August, may meet some of the alleged victims, the Auxiliary Bishop of Lisbon, Americo Aguiar, said recently.
Faced with thousands of cases of clergy sex abuse that have come to light around the world and the accusations of cover-ups, the pontiff promised in 2019 to root out paedophilia within the Church.
He is under pressure to tackle the scandal and investigations have been launched in several countries, including Ieland, Australia, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Portugal's bishops will convene in March to draw conclusions from the independent report and "rid the Church of this scourge as much as possible", Father Manuel Barbosa, a senior member of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, said in January.
For Alexandra, who is anticipating the bishops' response with a mix of hope and scepticism, the independent commission represents "a good first step" for victims who want to "break the wall of silence" that has surrounded them for so long.
