Catalonia to probe claims Bolivia was used by Jesuits as ‘dumping ground for pedophiles’
Abuse cases committed by Catalan Jesuits in Bolivia will be investigated by the Catalan ombudsman – an office appointed by the regional parliament – following a request from the South American country’s Survivors’ Community.
The group accuses the Catalan province of the Society of Jesus in Spain of turning Bolivia into a kind of “dumping ground for pedophiles” by sending Jesuits there; they were known to have committed sex crimes.
Some of the priests reported by Casp students, like Father Francesc Peris (known as Padre Cesc), were sent to Bolivia, where they continued their history of abuse.
Cesc Peris — who was widely known as an abuser at Casp, to the point that students nicknamed him “Sex Penis” — stayed in Cochabamba for only a year, but that was enough time for him to make new victims.
One of his victims described how Peris “would go from bed to bed” at night in the girls’ dormitory at Juan XXIII. The number of abuses he committed in Cochabamba remains unknown. Not only girls were targeted – at least one boy reported being abused by him to the Survivors’ Community.
Peris was sent back to Barcelona the following year and continued abusing minors until 2004. In 2005, he was finally removed from the school and barred from working with minors. Earlier this year, a judge ruled that all of Peris’s crimes had reached their statute of limitations, so he will not be punished.
Father Lluís Tó González had a similar path. He spent years teaching at another Jesuit school in Catalonia and was eventually convicted of abusing an 8-year-old girl in 1992. He received a two-year prison sentence but was soon afterward sent by the Catalan province to Bolivia.
In South America, he repeatedly abused girls, especially vulnerable ones, such as the daughter of a cleaning woman in El Alto, near La Paz. Letters exchanged between Jesuit priests in Catalonia and the Bolivian provincial in the 1990s, Father Marcos Recolons, were discovered by Barcelona newspaper El Periódico and show that the order knew Tó continued committing sex crimes.
Another serial abuser in Bolivia from Catalonia was Father Luis Roma (known as Padre Lucho). Between 1994 and 2005, he lived in Charagua, a town in southeastern Bolivia with a predominantly Indigenous Guarani population.
Lucho kept dozens of photographs of Guarani girls – aged between 8 and 11 – in sexualized poses, which he took after persuading them to visit his room.
In 2023, the scandal involving Spanish Father Alfonso Pedrajas was revealed. He died in 2009, and his diary—detailing 85 abuse cases he committed over the years in Bolivia—was uncovered by the newspaper El País, sparking a major outcry in Bolivia.
Lucho Roma’s case is also connected to Catalonia in other ways. Flores recalled that his brother, Father Francesc Roma – also involved in at least one abuse case at the Casp school in the 1980s – visited Lucho in Bolivia in 1998.
“Letters show that Lucho invited his pedophile brother to experience ‘the delights of Charagua.’ The Catalan provincial allowed Francesc to come, and the Bolivian provincial accepted his visit,” Flores said.
Flores’s said Bolivia was treated by the Jesuits as a “dumping ground for pedophiles, since they would send here priests they knew had abused children in Spain.”
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americ...pedophiles
Abuse cases committed by Catalan Jesuits in Bolivia will be investigated by the Catalan ombudsman – an office appointed by the regional parliament – following a request from the South American country’s Survivors’ Community.
The group accuses the Catalan province of the Society of Jesus in Spain of turning Bolivia into a kind of “dumping ground for pedophiles” by sending Jesuits there; they were known to have committed sex crimes.
Some of the priests reported by Casp students, like Father Francesc Peris (known as Padre Cesc), were sent to Bolivia, where they continued their history of abuse.
Cesc Peris — who was widely known as an abuser at Casp, to the point that students nicknamed him “Sex Penis” — stayed in Cochabamba for only a year, but that was enough time for him to make new victims.
One of his victims described how Peris “would go from bed to bed” at night in the girls’ dormitory at Juan XXIII. The number of abuses he committed in Cochabamba remains unknown. Not only girls were targeted – at least one boy reported being abused by him to the Survivors’ Community.
Peris was sent back to Barcelona the following year and continued abusing minors until 2004. In 2005, he was finally removed from the school and barred from working with minors. Earlier this year, a judge ruled that all of Peris’s crimes had reached their statute of limitations, so he will not be punished.
Father Lluís Tó González had a similar path. He spent years teaching at another Jesuit school in Catalonia and was eventually convicted of abusing an 8-year-old girl in 1992. He received a two-year prison sentence but was soon afterward sent by the Catalan province to Bolivia.
In South America, he repeatedly abused girls, especially vulnerable ones, such as the daughter of a cleaning woman in El Alto, near La Paz. Letters exchanged between Jesuit priests in Catalonia and the Bolivian provincial in the 1990s, Father Marcos Recolons, were discovered by Barcelona newspaper El Periódico and show that the order knew Tó continued committing sex crimes.
Another serial abuser in Bolivia from Catalonia was Father Luis Roma (known as Padre Lucho). Between 1994 and 2005, he lived in Charagua, a town in southeastern Bolivia with a predominantly Indigenous Guarani population.
Lucho kept dozens of photographs of Guarani girls – aged between 8 and 11 – in sexualized poses, which he took after persuading them to visit his room.
In 2023, the scandal involving Spanish Father Alfonso Pedrajas was revealed. He died in 2009, and his diary—detailing 85 abuse cases he committed over the years in Bolivia—was uncovered by the newspaper El País, sparking a major outcry in Bolivia.
Lucho Roma’s case is also connected to Catalonia in other ways. Flores recalled that his brother, Father Francesc Roma – also involved in at least one abuse case at the Casp school in the 1980s – visited Lucho in Bolivia in 1998.
“Letters show that Lucho invited his pedophile brother to experience ‘the delights of Charagua.’ The Catalan provincial allowed Francesc to come, and the Bolivian provincial accepted his visit,” Flores said.
Flores’s said Bolivia was treated by the Jesuits as a “dumping ground for pedophiles, since they would send here priests they knew had abused children in Spain.”
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americ...pedophiles
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
