The Commission of Investigation into Abuses in the Church of the Catalan Legislative Chamber sent this Friday to the parliamentary table a request to present to the public prosecutor the failure to appear as a witness of Archbishop Juan José Omella. The senior leader of the Spanish Bishops' Conference twice refused to testify before deputies, citing in the letter in which he announced that he would not attend the Constitutional Court's jurisprudence, which, in his opinion, exempts him from attending and in which In the past, they have hosted high-ranking government officials such as former President Mariano Rajoy or former Vice President Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría in other commissions on various topics.
The President of the Commission, Susana Segovia (En Comú Podem), had already warned earlier in the week that if Omella did not respond to the Commission's second call, it would consider referring the case to the Public Prosecutor's Office, as noted in the regulations the camera. In its Article 68, which regulates these commissions, it stipulates that officials are obliged to appear, but witnesses are not. Many of those named ignore the call and the file ends up with the public prosecutor, who ultimately archives it.
In the first letter in which he expressed his refusal to appear before Parliament, Omella recalled that the Constitutional Court, in a 2016 ruling, had found that the Chambers were not responsible for “providing a legal qualification of the investigated facts”, and this is not the case, is responsible for the implementation of “allegations regarding the authorship of unlawful behavior”. Segovia has decided to send the decision on whether to appeal to the prosecutor's office to the parliamentary committee, and now the chamber's highest body will make the decision. The PSC has two votes there and was already against Omella's statement at this point.
The Commission has been active since November 2022 and several victims and witnesses of abuse cited by the same groups have passed through it. Omella, in the two letters in which he refused to assist the Commission, also repeated the argument that the Church had already provided assistance in the investigation of the abuses; for example, the provision of data for the report that the House of Representatives commissioned from the Ombudsman in March two years ago.