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 it concerns a case in Latin America, the address is: [email protected].
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Spanish bishops reiterate that they will compensate all victims of abuse, even if the perpetrator has died, if the church has “moral conviction” that the event took place. “We have to examine it on a case-by-case basis. And when this moral conclusion is reached, there will be this moral reparation,” explained the spokesman and general secretary of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference (CEE), César García Magán, this Monday at the press conference following the general assembly of the Spanish episcopate. So far, in the action guide published by the EWG in May, the so-called EWG Instruction on Sexual Abuse, the bishops ruled out compensation for victims whose perpetrators are dead, which is the case in most cases. This is one of the sure points to be included in the future “comprehensive reparation plan for victims” of pedophilia in the Church, which the bishops unanimously approved to initiate its development.
“It is a work package presented by the Coordination Office of Children’s Services and has three fundamental orientations: victim care, prevention and comprehensive reparation in all perspectives, psychological, social, spiritual and also economic,” explained García Magan. The spokesman did not specify the expected deadline for the approval of the plan: “It will be done as soon as possible.” It was also not made clear whether the bishops are clear about how much they want to pay the victims and whether they intend to sell assets to make amends. “In principle, the perpetrators are liable, i.e. those who committed the crime and, if necessary, the institutions involved.” If, for example, the perpetrator has died, the institution is responsible. Whether it is a diocese or an institute of consecrated life. In principle no, the bishops’ conference,” he emphasized.
Francisco César García Magán, this Friday in Madrid. Daniel Gonzalez (EFE)
After the news conference, the bishops released a four-page statement apologizing to the victims, committing to “being accountable to them” and being more transparent in their investigations and reparations processes. “We want to express unequivocally the pain, shame and sadness that this reality triggers in us,” the document says. As usual, they made no mention of the cover-up and silence that the church has practiced in the face of abuse for decades. On the other hand, they emphasized that pedophilia is also a social problem and that it is unfair that the work of all priests and religious is called into question because of this problem. “It is not fair to attribute to everyone the evil caused by some,” the Spanish prelates emphasize in the statement.
The bishops’ announcement collides directly with the audit on child abuse that they commissioned more than a year and a half ago from the law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, whose task is precisely to prepare a proposal on how the Church should approach the Compensate victims. Although the office sent the almost complete report to the bishops last Friday (as no input was received from outside consultants for the company), the bishops confirm that they have received only four documents: a draft with about 800 changes, subject to change, and three Appendices with a preliminary complaint table and prevention tables of the Spanish dioceses and parishes. The only thing the Secretary-General submits is that the index of the document “does not match what was originally approved.”
Relations between Javier Cremades’ office and the EWG have been strained in recent months, and the institution even gave him a ten-day ultimatum last month to submit the report. The company declined to accept it and said it would submit it in December. The bishops had to decide in this assembly whether they wanted to consider the treaty broken or to allow its explanations. García Magán has indicated that no decision has been made yet.
The meeting also comes amid anticipation of the visit to the Pope that all Spanish bishops will pay in Rome next Tuesday in response to an unusual summons from the pontiff. The official pretext is to analyze the equally extraordinary inspection carried out by the Vatican on the Spanish seminaries. However, the call was announced two days after the first assessment of the Ombudsman’s report by EEC President Cardinal Juan José Omella, in which he accused journalists of lying about the figures “with the intent to deceive”. When asked about this meeting, García Magán explained that the management of the pedophile scandal was not among the points to be discussed in Rome, but that he would be informed of everything at the Pope’s request: “If the Pope opens the dialogue, we “We will do it with great interest.” He explained that they were not afraid, although he admitted that this call “doesn’t happen every day.”
During the press conference, García Magán once again made the Church’s participation in the Ombudsman’s proposal conditional on its participation in a state reparations fund, through an independent body that recognizes it as such and determines reparations. “The church will always repair. However, I say that we will participate in this compensation management when a fund is created to compensate all victims. If it is a question of compensating the victims of the Church, be it with or without a court ruling, or from the point of view of a moral or ethical obligation, then we will do it,” emphasized the CEE spokesman.
The truth is that the EWG has never wanted to report on the compensation it paid. He didn’t make it this Friday either. The Secretary General of the Bishops himself made it clear a few months ago that he was not aware of any diocese or religious order that had paid compensation for pedophilia. However, according to an EL PAÍS count of cases handled in court, the church has already paid at least 2.1 million euros to 230 victims abused by 53 pedophiles. The amounts are between 675 and 73,000 euros per victim. In fact, in the Ombudsman’s report, seven dioceses admit to having paid them on occasion (Cartagena, Mallorca, Tui-Vigo, Vitoria, Barcelona, Bilbao and Madrid).
Since the publication of the Ombudsman’s report, the Spanish bishops, led by their president Juan José Omella, have publicly discredited it. Actually, Omella, in the opening speech of the plenary session this Monday, assured that the findings of the report on pedophilia in the Church of the Ombudsman were not valid and attacked the survey carried out by GAD3 to estimate victims in the religious sector (a 1.13% of the population, i.e. more than 440,000 people): We express our great disappointment with the above projection and with the questionable reliability of the results of this survey. (…) We have verified the information provided by the Ombudsman in his report on the above-mentioned survey and, frankly, we cannot rely on the accuracy and reliability of these results,” said the President of the Bishops. The Archbishop of Barcelona also once again accused the journalists of “defamation” in calculating the percentage (the Ombudsman does not take into account numerical estimates in his study), which he considers to be an “exorbitant” figure. But the bishop chief attacked not only the GAD3 survey, but also demographic surveys in general, questioning the credibility of sociological science: “The surveys are not reliable because there is no way to confirm the accuracy of the answer.”
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