EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has
an updated database
with all known cases.
If you know of any case that has not seen the light, you can write to us at:
Abusos@elpais.es
.
If it is a case in Latin America, the address is:
Abusamerica@elpais.es
.
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The Spanish Conference of Religious (Confer), an organization that brings together the majority of Spanish religious orders and congregations, a total of 408, distances itself from the management of abuses led until now by the other most visible part of the Church, the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), which brings together bishops and their dioceses.
He does so a day after it came to light, through this newspaper, that the Spanish bishops hid more than 325 cases in their report
To shed light
on pedophilia within the Church, all of them already admitted by orders and dioceses. to the Ombudsman.
The news has caused great indignation among the victims and affects the orders, since the majority of these cases belong to 39 congregations that the bishops excluded from their accounting.
An example is the 130 complaints from the Marists - the second order with the most cases admitted - that the Ombudsman collects and, however, they do not appear in the bishops' document.
To shed light,
it only counted 806 cases, compared to the 1,460 known defendants, with at least 2,608 victims, according to the EL PAÍS public database.
And the management of the abuse scandal led by the EEC, to which they have always delegated orders, has caused discomfort among them and the preparation of the controversial report
To shed light
has been the straw that broke the camel's back, they confirm. ecclesiastical sources.
In fact, they point out, Confer was left out of the preparation of the document, about which she knew nothing and to which she had no access.
before the bishops made it public, by surprise, last December.
“We congregations are tired of how bishops make decisions on this issue unilaterally.
We would like to participate as equals in the initiatives and row together so that the truth comes to light,” says a source from a great Spanish order.
Several bishoprics have also joined the discontent, claiming that the creation of this report was a “manipulation” to overshadow the Cremades audit, which was more critical of the Church and which counted more cases: 1,382 accused and 2,056 victims.
“Many dioceses are fed up with the plumbers of the Episcopal Conference,” says a senior diocesan official.
Confer did not want to make an assessment about the concealment of the cases that affect them.
In any case, the organization has stressed to EL PAÍS that “the religious congregations have provided in a timely manner the data required by the different institutions [the law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, to which the bishops commissioned an audit, and the Ombudsman]” and that he knows “well the process carried out by all of them, with commitment and rigor.”
He also highlighted that
To Give Light
“is an initiative of the Spanish Episcopal Conference to bring together the other reports and in it they offer a classification of all the data,” and that the bishops are the ones who have committed “to provide new data periodically.” .
“Today, at the Confer we do not have data;
What our organization has done is collaborate in this process as an interlocutor to put in contact: Ombudsman, Cremades, CEE and Religious Congregations,” explains the entity.
For all these reasons, Confer has decided to start moving on his own.
In a statement, it announced this Tuesday the creation of its own safe environments office, an alternative to that of the EEC and its email, to care for its victims and support religious orders and congregations in the "processes of care, prevention , intervention and repair.”
To this end, it has also created its own contact email for victims (escucha@confer.es) and has appointed a director to coordinate this initiative,
the psychologist
Gloria Rodríguez, “with extensive experience in organization, direction and crisis management.”
Rodríguez was the first general director of the Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, the female section of the Legionaries of Christ.
In this way, the attention to the victims is divided by the Church, with two parallel paths.
Confer insists that she is thinking about the victims: “In this effort to be at her side, we once again ask for forgiveness and reaffirm our commitment to the eradication of this scourge,” states the religious institution.
“Thus, the Confer takes another step in reflecting, guiding and advising congregations in the face of all types of abuse,” she details.
In this way, the religious orders separate themselves from the path that until now the EEC has been setting and that conditioned them to go, to a large extent, at the pace set by the bishops.
It was these, always with a denialist and opaque discourse, who commissioned an audit of the Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo firm, created a general office to channel the complaints (in which the orders had to be integrated), and also those who criticized the results. of the Ombudsman's report (the Confer, on the contrary, appreciated it).
The CEE is also weaving a comprehensive plan for reparation for victims and has exclusively drafted its own report
To Shine Light
, which has deflated the reality of the scandal figures.
The orders have agreed in recent years to delegate the management of the scandal to the bishops, as the visible head of the Church, when in reality most of the cases affect religious congregations, due to their prominence in education in recent decades.
Furthermore, some of them are the ones that have taken the most steps to provide information, recognize the damage and take action, in contrast to the reluctance of most dioceses.
Some congregations have moved faster, in part, because they still have schools and the scandal affected them fully, much more than the parishes.
However, their efforts and attempts to save their image have been neutralized on numerous occasions when they collided with the opaque attitude and denial of the scandal of the Episcopal Conference.
An example: in January 2021 the Jesuits, the Pope's order, presented an internal investigation that admitted abuse by 96 members since 1927, but at that time the then secretary general of the EEC, Luis Argüello, continued saying that the cases in Spain They were “zero or very few” and he rejected the idea of commissioning an internal investigation (which they finally requested in February 2022, from the law firm Cremades & Calvo Sotelo).
After the delivery of the Cremades document, the CEE publicly underestimated it and presented the two reports (
To shed light
and the audit) on the same day, on the eve of the Christmas lottery draw, without prior notice and giving prominence to its own.
There was also no press conference and the only statement before a media outlet was that of its communications director, José Gabriel Vera, to TV3, to attack the journalists who asked about the data: “Enough of reducing the victims to figures.
Enough, because if we don't hurt them.
We get involved in the fun thing of seeing who has the longest… the number, of course.”
The number of cases that the bishops have ignored in their report, in addition to the 325 that have disappeared compared to those declared by orders and dioceses to the Ombudsman, is much greater.
At least 654 if we compare the official figure managed by the CEE with the accused who are actually known: so far, 1,460, with at least 2,608 victims, according to the public database of EL PAÍS, the only one that details all the cases. known - with the initials of the accused, place and date of the events and source of the information - and compiles those that have come to light by any means, such as the press, court rulings or admission by the Church itself.
Some congregations and dioceses believe that this concealment “the only thing it has achieved is to boycott the victim assistance offices of the dioceses that are working well.”
The EEC has reacted to the complaints by quietly rectifying the PDF document posted on the institution's website.
So far there have been four versions, the last one this Monday, after the information from EL PAÍS that pointed out the scandal.
The cases recorded have already risen from 806 to 888.
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