The spotlight is finally on the pedophilia scandal within the Church of Spain. Faced with a clergy in denial, the government of socialist Pedro Sanchez announced on Sunday February 6 that it was entrusting the Defender of Rights with the task of breaking decades of taboo. Ángel Gabilondo will have to “contribute to the determination of the facts and responsibilities, to the compensation of victims and to the planning of public policies aimed at preventing” the scourge of sexual abuse of children and adolescents. It will have to submit its conclusions and recommendations to parliament and the government.
The Spanish procedure provides for the Defender of Rights to be officially entrusted with his mission in the coming days, the time to organize a transpartisan vote in the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, to ratify the composition of his team. One should find, in this independent advisory committee, representatives of the administration, associations of victims and, in theory, of the Catholic hierarchy.
It is not won: the Spanish bishops are already denouncing this initiative, on the grounds that it would only aim to “create damage to the Church”. For the time being, they are playing for time by asserting an overloaded agenda. As always in this season, they are currently practicing their annual spiritual exercises in Madrid, a moment of introspection inspired by the doctrine of Saint Ignatius, which will be followed by a whole series of meetings. In short, until the month of April, during which their traditional spring plenary assembly will take place, radio silence from the bishops is to be expected.
The revelations multiply
If in France, it is the episcopal conference which set up an independent commission under the aegis of senior civil servant Jean-Marc Sauvé (the results of the work of this body were made public in October 2021), as in Portugal where the bishops have just set up an independent commission; in Spain, the clergy put the brakes on. Politicians have therefore decided to descend into the arena, while the revelations of touching and rape committed on children in religious schools, catechism classes or summer camps are increasing.
For more than three years, the daily El País investigation on the subject. In early December, he sent Pope Francis a list of 251 priests and religious accused, by just over 1,200 victims, of pedophile acts having occurred between 1943 and 2018. The Sovereign Pontiff immediately ordered the opening of an internal investigation. Since, El País received 150 additional cases. But according to the German Jesuit Hans Zollner, an international expert on the question, and who has his entrances to the Vatican, the real figures are in all likelihood as high as in France (between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophiles since 1950, 330,000 victims). “Usually, the surveys carried out in different parts of the world identify between 3% and 5% of priests and religious accused”, he recalls.
In Madrid, in recent weeks, several small parties allied with the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), the far-left formation Podemos, the Basque nationalist parties PNV and EH Bildu, as well as the separatists of Esquerra Republicana in power in Catalonia, demanded the opening of a parliamentary inquiry. Pedro Sanchez finally decided, considering that a truly impartial work was needed. Unprecedented fact, the chief executive went to the seat of the episcopate, on January 24, to warn of his intentions his president, the archbishop of Barcelona Joan Josep Omella.
For the moment, the associations of victims of pedophile acts welcome the choice of the Defender of Rights. “His figure as mediator ensures neutrality and prestige to an investigation which must not be tainted by partisan quarrels”, considers the writer Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga, victim of the Marist Congregation in the 1980s. The press does not fail to highlight doubts, nevertheless, the impartiality of Ángel Gabilondo.
Unlucky candidate of the PSOE in the regional elections of May 2021 in Madrid, this academic was a monk with the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, from 1966 to 1978. He then taught literature in schools in Vitoria and Madrid. However, the latter are precisely cited in the documents on the alleged cases of pedophilia given to the pope two months ago. Some ask the question: did he know at the time? Since then, he says in any case to have lost faith.