The pedophilia scandal in the Bolivian Church is spreading and reaching the office of Pope Francis. The President of Bolivia, Luis Arce, has asked the Pope for access to all files, records and information on cases of pedophilia committed by Catholic priests and religious on Bolivian territory and of which the Church is aware. “These years of impunity cannot be extended indefinitely without justice determining responsibilities and victims closing a gruesome chapter in which the only solace they have is the right to truth, justice and the right not to cover up the.” events is,” he claimed. Arce wrote in an official letter to Pope Francis this Monday. It is the first time that a president has approached the pope directly, demanding the opening of church archives so that civil authorities can investigate child sexual abuse and its cover-up.
Arce’s letter comes at a time when the pedophilia scandal sparked by press releases has hit the Bolivian church hierarchy head-on. This is how Arce conveyed it to him at the beginning of the writing. “I am writing to you, shocked and outraged by the events recently uncovered in our plurinational state of Bolivia, based on the investigation of the Spanish newspaper EL PAÍS entitled Diary of a pederast priest.” This report told the story of the secret newspaper in which the Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas admitted molesting dozens of children to fix schools in the South American country and how his bosses covered everything up. “Regrettable and abnormal crimes that have been concealed with complete impunity for years, a time that seemed to pass normally due to the complicit silence of the local church structure, which covered it up with unacceptable indifference and indolence,” Arce claims in the letter.
The news forced the company to remove eight former senior officials from office for a cover-up, prompted prosecutors to launch an investigation and led to new cases coming to light. “These are not mistakes or deviations in behavior, they are crimes that harm girls and boys for life and also harm the Church, and for that very reason these pronouncements must be translated into concrete actions for justice to prevail.” “These very Serious crimes will not be committed again, using faith and the Church to achieve impunity,” stresses the Bolivian President, who is “outraged”. “As Brother Francisco will understand, this situation has caused great pain, resentment and frustration among the Bolivian people; “I’m a sentiment I’m holding on to as the first president of my country,” stressed the president.
Arce has also informed the Pope that his government is working on “mechanisms to strengthen the control and verification of personal records” on the entry of new foreign Catholic clergy to Bolivia, with the aim of preventing these crimes. “The Bolivian state reserves the right to allow the entry into the territory of new foreign priests and religious who have a history of sexual abuse of minors,” the letter reads. The President reiterates that he will maintain this future measure until “the current agreements and conventions are reviewed and the negotiations for the Agreement between the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Holy See are completed”, which, according to Arce, includes “reservations” must be included “, which prevent new cases of abuse and their cover-up.
Other public institutions go even further. Like the Bolivian Attorney General’s Office, who proposes to review “the situation and status” of Jesuits in the country, especially in the educational field, where the company owns schools and universities throughout the territory. “The schools and institutes that depend on the Church and especially on the Society of Jesus cannot be allowed to continue as isolated entities under state control. [El control] It has to be inclusive and cross-sectoral like any private school, and those prerogatives and the absolute lack of oversight must remain.”
Two days ago it became known that the Pope had sent to La Paz one of his greatest experts in the fight against abuse, the Spanish priest Jordi Bertomeu, known for having taken part in numerous missions in Latin America, for example in cases of pedophilia in the Father Maciel in the Legionaries of Christ or in the abuse scandal in the Chilean Church that ended with the dismissal of practically the entire Church leadership of that country. Although the official idea – laid out in a communiqué from the local church authorities – is that formation issues are addressed and the visit was planned, the seriousness of the situation inevitably invites us to think of a larger, unforeseen work the scandal.