EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has a data base updated with all known cases. If you know of any case that has not seen the light, you can write to us at: [email protected]. If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: [email protected].
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Javier was one of the first victims of abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church who went out in the press to denounce his attacker, in the La Bañeza seminary, in León. He went 10 years ago, in 2014, and then he was alone. It has taken a decade, and the definitive outbreak of the scandal starting in 2018, to reach the image that was seen for the first time this Monday morning at the door of the headquarters of the Episcopal Conference (CEE), in Madrid: a protest with banners by a group of victims of pedophilia in the Church. “This was my goal, I knew that if I spoke, more people would come out,†Javier summarizes. About 15 people, from the Stolen Childhood association (ANIR) and the Association of Victims of Abuse in Navarra, were there since nine in the morning. The bishops of the 70 Spanish dioceses, plus the emeritus, who meet this week in a plenary assembly in which they must elect their new president, have had to go ahead. Many have avoided it, starting with the outgoing president himself, Juan José Omella, who according to the participants in the rally has entered through another door, located a few meters before, the one in the garage. Only one bishop has stopped to talk to the victims, that of Bilbao, Joseba Segura.
“Enough is enough,†said one of the signs. And another: â € œWhy doesn't the Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy attend to and repair its victims as proposed by the Council of Europe?  €. Juan Cuatrecasas, from ANIR, father of a minor who suffered abuse at the Opus Dei school in Gaztelueta, Bizkaia, explains that they have mobilized following the latest maneuver of the EEC, which in its report on abuses presented in December lowered the number of known cases to 806, compared to the 1,460 already recorded in the EL PAÍS database, and left out, for example, 325 already admitted by orders and dioceses to the Ombudsman: “We are here to vindicate the rights that they continue to be denied to the victims, not as alms, but as something fair, and to protest because the Church is looking the other way and is cheating, which is the most serious thing. The cases have been lowered in a deceitful and totally negligent way, with bad faith. They continue to deny, minimize, and even accuse the victims of lying. We want them to react once and for all and behave like Christians and human beings.â€
The bishops' report, called To give light, has created unrest and division in the Church, because dioceses and orders have protested the “manipulation” of the data they have sent to the EEC, where ecclesiastical sources accuse “the plumbers of the Episcopal Conference” of deliberately lowering the dimension of the scandal. In fact, the religious orders, grouped in CONFER, have decided to start working on their own. The document is also controversial because for the first time it distinguishes between “proven†, “plausible†and “unproven†cases, with the result that it barely considers 238 credible. That is the figure from the latest version of the document, then, as a result of internal protests, the CEE has been correcting the study in recent weeks on its website, and the registered cases have already risen from 806 to 942. If we compare 238 cases considered true with those counted by this newspaper, the result is that the Church only believes one in ten people who report abuse. “Omella has been saying that they want to make amends, that they want to do many things, we will see who becomes president now and what they do, let's hope something changes, because until now they have only covered up the pedophiles,” says Jesús Zudaire, president of the Association of Victims of Abuse in Navarra.
Cuatrecasas, one of those present who spoke with the bishop of Bilbao when he stopped to talk with them, explains that Joseba Segura is one of the few sensitive to the scandal. “We know that he has all our respect, that he has always helped us, but it is the only thing there is, there are two or three. They don't reach the fingers of one hand. The others are cowards, they look the other way, they appear in the media giving one piece of advice. We do not need cowards, we need committed people who comply with the principles of the Catholic Church and who once and for all do the pending work. Concrete measures, not words. Talk to the victims, make them feel represented.†In this sense, and regarding the pools that are being handled regarding Omella's successor, he believes that if the new president is the archbishop of Valladolid, Luis Argüello, “it will be for the worse,†given his precedents. Argüello, as general secretary of the bishops until 2022, always denied the scandal and said that in Spain the cases were “zero or very few.”
Inside the building on Añastro Street, the bishops began their assembly with a mass and a farewell speech by Omella, who has not once alluded to the abuse scandal, despite the fact that it will be one of the central topics of these days of meetings, until Friday. In response to questions from journalists, he acknowledged that he had seen the victims at the door, but explained: “I arrived earlier, but that's it.” The protesters deny it, reiterating that they saw him coming and he entered through the door that was before. In any case, Omella said, “we always remember them.” Another allusion to current events has been about the support for Pope Francis so that “no one doubts that.” These are words that come after the uproar unleashed by some priests from Toledo, who in a video posted on YouTube said they prayed “strongly” for the death of the pontiff.
The victims also demand that the Government take the initiative, following the recommendations made in the Ombudsman's report, published in October. They ask for a compensation fund, a national office for assistance to victims, free therapies, disability scales for those who are not able to rebuild their lives, and a fight against the work and student exclusion of victims. “And the protection of victims when they report, because we are still seeing cases in which those who report are harassed, insulted and threatened,†Cuatrecasas adds.
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