EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has an updated database of all known cases. If you know of a case that has not yet come to light, you can write to us at: [email protected]. If the case is in Latin America, the address is: [email protected].
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The Minister of the Bolivian Presidency, María Nela Prada, on Monday called on the Bolivian Catholic Church to speak out forcefully to Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas’ newspaper, Pica, in which this religious man admitted to having abused dozens of minors, when he was a teacher at several Bolivian schools and where he also told how the Order had protected him. “We await a strong statement from the Church regarding these events,” Nela Prada told the media during an event in La Paz (the Bolivian capital) to mark Labor Day. The minister stressed that the abuse of minors by the clergy in Bolivia was not an “isolated case” and emphasized that “internal reflection is necessary” within the church hierarchy and that this sends “clear signals” “because [estos episodios] They are crimes.”
Nela Prada has also indicated that she hopes that “the judiciary will act with the full weight of the law” and that “the appropriate authorities will conduct the investigation” into Padre Pica’s case, particularly “those found responsible”. The minister’s statements come a day after Wilfredo Chávez, Bolivia’s Attorney General – the equivalent of Spain’s Attorney General – announced via his social media this Sunday that he will launch an investigation against the Jesuits after allegations by three of de Pica’s victims were published were made by EL PAÍS. “This horror would have been covered up by the leadership of the Catholic Church at the time, according to the publication of the Spanish newspaper. On the first business day, we will request the background information through the consulate so that this very serious fact can be investigated in Bolivia,” Chávez wrote on his Twitter profile.
Subsequently, Wilfredo Chávez told this newspaper that he “takes the horrible case very seriously” and will ask the Bolivian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to inquire whether there are records of the case in Spain, and will also request the initiation of criminal proceedings in Cochabamba, where it was the epicenter of the alleged criminal activities of Pedrajas. “For this we need a copy of the priest’s memoirs, which are the source of the report,” he said.
Pica, who died in 2009, left written notes in a diary about the sexual abuse he committed on dozens of children in different schools in Bolivia, most notably at the Juan XXIII center in Cochabamba. “I’ve hurt a lot of people (85?) too many,” he admits. Pedrajas spent most of his religious life (about 48 years) in Bolivia, where he served as a teacher, headmaster, novice director and career counselor, among other things.
In the text, the Jesuit also relates how his superiors covered up his crimes (up to seven Jesuit provincials and a dozen Bolivian and Spanish ministers) and the complaints of some victims who came to the Order. In the document, Pica does not describe the abuse in detail, but EL PAÍS has reconstructed these gaps through five of his victims and several relatives. Among them was his nephew Fernando, who found the diary while cleaning in a family storage room at the end of 2021.
Fernando has denounced the abuses in various religious and judicial bodies without receiving any response. Among them was the Jesuit delegation in Bolivia, dedicated to investigating complaints of pedophilia. Osvaldo Chirveches, a former Provincial of the Order who now directs this service office, maintained an email correspondence with Fernando until last October. Since then, Chirveches has never informed him of the investigation that the Society of Jesus was required to open under the Canon Law. The ex-provincial asked only to send him the newspaper, but Fernando didn’t do it.
Following the release of EL PAÍS, the Order released a statement acknowledging that in addition to the complaint from Pica’s nephew, it received a second complaint from a victim and that an investigation has been ongoing since April. He also acknowledges the “credibility” of Pedrajas’ nephew’s complaint.
This last part, however, is contradicted by what Chirveches told this newspaper days before the report was published. At the time, the resolution claimed that Fernando’s complaint was invalid because he “presented it in a communication by email in which the director of the school, Juan XXIII, appeared.” Given this newspaper’s insistence that this violates Pope Francis’ current norm – which states that the criminal complaint is “all information about a possible crime that reaches the Ordinary or the Hierarch in any way” and that “it is not necessary.” that in the event of a formal complaint” (Article 9) – Chirveches was silent. It simply said that the company had launched a preliminary investigation after receiving a complaint from a victim and was prepared to send the results to Rome and “wait for information from there” in order to initiate canonical proceedings.
So far, the Society of Jesus had not publicly reported the case. During the canonical inquiry, Chirveches states, they did not interrogate the provincials who protected him and who are still alive. She has also not disclosed whether she has taken any precautions against them.
An unusual testimony
For the first time since EL PAÍS began investigating pedophilia in the Catholic Church in 2018, which has uncovered 954 cases in Spain alone, this newspaper accesses a document that sheds light on abuse and its cover-up by the aggressor of the religious side shows. Pica gave the name Historia to this type of memoir of 383 pages typed on a computer. A diary composed of reflections, accounts of episodes in his life and dozens of letters. A total of 350 overwritten entries, in bold, by place and date they were written.
His reading allows us to trace his life from his entry into the Order in Spain in 1960 as a novice to a year after his death in 2008 when he stopped writing. On the pages he talks about his trip to Latin America as a missionary and the impression that the poverty of certain places like Cochabamba makes on him. But he also describes with shame and fear the abuses he commits. He is afraid of being discovered and blackmailed. He shares how he “asks for help” from various members of the Church to end this fear. He feels guilty about his crimes, although he always refers to them with euphemisms like “sins”, “faults” or “disease”.
Sweetened descriptions that have nothing to do with the statements of the victims who have already spoken to EL PAÍS and who remember the abuse as a real nightmare. “The consequences that the abuse had for me were devastating for my emotional, affective, economic and professional life,” recalls one of them.
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