"You have come to shore ...", thus begins one of the most popular mass songs in the world,
Fisherman of Men
, composed in 1974 by the Basque priest Cesáreo Gabaráin, author of some 500 liturgical themes and the only priest that has been a gold record in Spain. An entire institution in the Spanish Catholic Church that became the personal prelate of John Paul II in 1979 until his death in 1991, at the age of 54. However, he had a hidden face that four former students of the Chamberí Marist College, in Madrid, where he was chaplain and spiritual director, wanted to reveal EL PAÍS. “He was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, on the one hand, a charismatic, popular priest, a friend of famous sportsmen and the Pope, and on the other, a pedophile. Something unimaginable for all those who admire him ”, accuses Eduardo Mendoza, 57 years old. He was the one who reported him to his guardian in 1978, a decision that, according to these testimonies, led to Gabaráin's expulsion from the center.Both the Marists and the Archdiocese of Madrid are going to open an investigation. With this new case of abuse, the total of those known to the Spanish clergy amounts to 356, with 892 victims, according to the accounting kept by EL PAÍS, in the absence of official data or the Church, which continues to refuse to investigate it.
However, leaving the Gabaráin school did not help. Not only was he relocated to another, that of San Fernando, in Madrid, managed by the Salesians, but, two months after the event, John Paul II appointed him prelate of His Holiness, an honorary title that the Pontiff grants to people of special relevance, by his own decision or at the proposal of the bishop of his diocese. It is not clear which Gabaráin belonged to, who was ordained in San Sebastián, but spent most of his life in Madrid. The archdiocese of the capital affirms to this newspaper that the priest does not appear in its records as incardinated in its territory. In any case, the Marists were obliged to inform this bishopric of what had happened in the Madrid school. In those years, the archbishop of the capital was Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancón,President of the Spanish Episcopal Conference. In 1982, with the Pope's first visit to Spain, Gabaráin directed the orchestra that sang, among many others,
Fisherman of men
in a massive meeting with young people at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium.
Gabaráin was a well-known priest with a media impact.
Friend of Real Madrid footballers, chaplain of the Fagor cycling team and
pater
of the Vuelta Ciclista a España.
His songs have been translated into various languages and are chanted at masses around the world.
"80% of what we sing in our churches has been composed by this priest," sums up a Spanish priest consulted by this newspaper.
In addition, his song
Death is not the end
was chosen in 1981 as the official anthem to honor the fallen of the Spanish Armed Forces.
Entrance to the Chamberí de los Maristas school, on Calle Rafael Calvo in Madrid.
Bald Elm
He was a modern priest who introduced pop and rock instruments to celebrations.
His Sunday masses in the auditorium of the Chamberí school were very popular, accompanied by a group with electric guitars and drums.
He maintained an economic level superior to that of the Marists who, according to former students, even allowed him to drive a Mercedes.
He was not wearing a cassock, but a
clergyman,
a civilian suit with a collar.
"He had charisma, he was nice, he played the flute with his nose, like a Pied Piper, who attracted kids," recalls Pedro Tena, a student of the seventies.
Mendoza relates: "He would let you smoke in the office, when you were 13 or 14 years old, when you went to see him."
"They told us: he is very sorry, he has thought about committing suicide"
The episode that, according to former students, triggered their departure from school occurred in December 1978, during a spiritual exercise in Los Molinos, a Marist residence in the Sierra de Madrid. Mendoza was there: “We each slept in a room. After the first night, my companion next door came very scared to tell me that Cesáreo had gotten into his bed and had reached out to him. He had abused him. I still remember his face of terror. They planned that that night he would go to his room through a common terrace. They stayed talking and when they heard the noise their tutor, Brother Aniceto Abad, entered. He scolded them and asked what they were doing together. “So I told him about it and he got very serious, he said it was something very serious, and he asked us if it had happened to more boys. Two more came out, as far as I know.From that moment on, Brother Aniceto took up the issue and spoke with the children's families. When we returned to school in January 1979, Cesáreo was gone ”. Mendoza underlines the decisive role of his tutor, Brother Aniceto, now deceased, who believed in them, helped them and, he maintains, forced Gabaráin to be thrown out of school. “It was a predator. When we showered, he would go down to the locker room to look ”.
Cesáreo Gabaráin on the cover of one of his works recorded on cassette tape.
One of the boys who was a victim of the priest in Los Molinos was César Aguilera, who has died. His brother Manuel remembers: “My brother was coming back to his room to shower and Father Cesáreo came in and began to tell him while he was trying to abuse him: 'You're a bad little bug'. But his companions arrived and saved him ”, he says. Days later he told everything to his sister, who pushed him to tell his parents. "They were silent because they saw that this open secret, in the end, was true." Aguilera says that her father picked up the phone and called the parents of the other victims to go talk to the director, brother Aquileo Manciles Bañuelos, also deceased. “To his surprise, he did not deny it. He said, 'We know. He is very sorry and wants to talk to you, because he has had a very bad time and says that he has thought about committing suicide, ”says Aguilera.He stressed that the objective of the Marists was to "put hot cloths" on the matter to try to fix it, but his father threatened to tell the press everything. “He told them: 'Either this man is leaving school or I'm going to talk to
Interviú '
.
That is why Gabaráin left the Marists of Chamberí at the end of 1978 ”.
But Gabaráin's cover-up was swift and forceful.
"After two months they made him prelate of His Holiness, we were frozen," recalls Mendoza.
In various interviews, John Paul II confessed that, at the time of his election as Pontiff in October 1978, the verses of the song
Fisher of Men
they rang in his head.
He appointed Gabaráin prelate five months later, on March 21, 1979. It remains to be clarified whether or not someone had previously informed him of the complaints against him, as in other cases of pedophile priests that have come to light and question the Karol Wojtyla's attitude to these crimes.
For example, the decades-long cover-up of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel, or what the devastating report on American Cardinal Theodor McCarrick revealed a few months ago.
Pope John Paul II with Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, Archbishop of Madrid, in an audience at the Vatican in May 1979.
It was the responsibility of the Marists to open an investigation and inform at least two bishops, that of the diocese of Madrid, Cardinal Tarancón, and also that of the diocese to which the religious involved was assigned. The Iberian Marist province, to which Madrid belongs, assures that it was unaware of the case and points out that the current leaders were very young at the time. He has opened an investigation to clarify how it was acted but, given the dates, with the schools closed, they point out that it is difficult to make inquiries quickly. On the other hand, the protagonists of the case have died and the order is looking for brothers who were in school at that time to clarify what happened. The Marists make themselves available to the victims at the email protecciondelmenor@maristasiberica.es.
The archdiocese of Madrid, for its part, has explained to this newspaper that it has no record in its archives of any episode of pedophilia related to Gabaráin.
He also says he does not know if the Marists notified Tarancón of the reasons for the departure of the priest from the school.
However, the diocese announces that it is willing to open an investigation and receive possible complaints, as well as to provide assistance to victims through its Repara project.
To do this, the email address inforepara@archimadrid.es is enabled.
"It was a 'shock' to see him on TV with the Pope"
The torment continued to accompany the Aguilera family for many years, every time they went to mass and listened to one of Gabaráin's songs. In 1982, on the Pope's first visit, they were also stunned to see him on TV with John Paul II. “They televised a mass live from the Bernabéu. In my house it was a
shock to
see Cesáreo conducting the youth orchestra with the Pope in front of him. That was one more sign that this guy was not punished, that the Church did absolutely nothing and allowed him to continue abusing children wherever he went.
Shortly after leaving the Marist center, in 1979, Gabaráin was appointed vicar of the parish of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, in the Madrid neighborhood of Mirasierra, and assigned to the San Fernando school in Madrid, managed by the Salesians.
Previously, after being ordained a priest in 1959, he had been chaplain in 1960 at the Marist College in Anzuola, Gipuzkoa.
But he was only there for four years and in 1964 he was assigned to the Zorroaga residence for the elderly, in San Sebastián.
There he spent two years, until he was sent again to another school, to the Marists of Madrid.
It was there that he began to compose and publish his songs.
Cesáreo Gabaráin plays the piano in one of the photographs that accompanied his vinyl albums.
Gabaráin came to the Chamberí Marists in 1966, he was there for 12 years, and there are accusations of abuse prior to 1978. His confessions were well known, and also shunned. In another sign of modernity, he was among the first in school to confess face to face, outside the confessional, sitting on a bench. "He touched you, he rubbed you, he put your face against his, you felt his breath," both Eduardo Mendoza and Joaquín Tena, 66, recall. This last witness is the one who recounts older events. It places Gabaráin's inappropriate practices at least a decade before the complaints against him, in the late 1960s. As spiritual director of the center, for example, he received in his office those who needed advice or help. “He had a mailbox at the door where you asked to see him, leaving a piece of paper, and he would call you in the middle of class.That's why we started to do it, to lose class, but we saw right away that it was to get a hold of you ”. On one occasion, these former students recall, someone made a graffiti: "Cesáreo fagot."
The strangest thing, says Joaquín Tena, happened when on two occasions he took him, with three other children, on a trip in his car to Zaragoza.
“He went to see his family and he asked us if we wanted to go with him.
There were four of us, and both times the same thing happened: at bedtime there was always one bed less and one had to sleep with it.
It was something he prepared.
We cast lots, cheating because no one wanted to, and both times it was the same.
We took it as a joke.
I don't know if something happened.
This friend never told us anything. "
More information
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Consult the first database of pedophilia in the Church
On the other hand, Pedro Tena, his brother, does tell something. What happened to him was later, in 1975. He was 11 years old. One day Gabaráin told him to be his office, because he had known that he liked poetry. “He called me to collaborate with him on a musical initiative that he had invented, the Response Song Festival. With the excuse of helping him with the letters, he called me into his office, asked me to sit on his lap, and shook my hand, like that, plain and simple. He began to put his hand up my ass, under my pants. I was saved by the bell because there was a knock on the door and I took the opportunity to leave. He had a reputation for being, rather, a fisher of children and not simply a mere groping. I don't think at all that mine was an isolated case ”.
This condition of spiritual tutor allowed him to call any student to his office at any time.
"The janitor would come and say: 'Fulanito, Cesáreo's office.'
I remember going down the deserted corridor, because everyone was in class, and going into his office, which was on the staircase ”.
Gabaráin could claim a child from his office even if he was in class, without giving explanations.
If you know of any case of sexual abuse that has not seen the light of day, write us with your complaint to
abusos@elpais.es
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