Ahead of papal visit, Spain pushes forward with reparations for church sex abuse victims
Spain’s long-delayed reckoning with sexual abuse within the Catholic Church entered a new phase this year with the launch of a reparations program for cases that involve accused clergy members who have died and whose alleged crimes are too old to be prosecuted.
With El País’ creation in 2018 of a database of clergy sexual abuse cases, Spain began confronting a legacy of abuse by priests and cover-up by generations of bishops and religious superiors. It did so later than other Western countries, including the United States, Ireland and Australia.
As the database grew, so did public outrage, with Spain’s ombudsman tasked by Parliament to investigate how widespread the issue was. In 2023, the ombudsman delivered a damning 800-page report estimating there were hundreds of thousands of possible victims of church sexual abuse in Spain over decades — based on a survey of 8,000 people. The report also examined 487 known cases.
In 2024, the bishops unilaterally created a system to assist victims on a case-by-case basis. It came months after the Spanish government announced its intention to force the church to compensate victims, accusing the church of minimizing the problem. It said the church’s in-house system was ineffective in part because it lacked outside oversight.
For that reason, many victims said they didn’t want to directly approach the church.
Earlier this year, the bishops conference said it had paid around 2 million euros ($2.3 million) to victims, but understood some victims’ discomfort. It acknowledged the utility of the new state-church model.
Ahead of Leo’s visit, Spanish activist Miguel Hurtado has cited his own abuse case to highlight its potential weaknesses.
More than two decades ago, Hurtado says that a monk named Andreu Soler sexually molested him when he was a 16-year-old Boy Scout in a group led by Soler at the Montserrat Abbey, an 11th-century Benedictine monastery in the mountains outside Barcelona.
Initially, the monastery persuaded his parents not to report the alleged abuse to authorities, Hurtado said. He tried moving on with his life. But as Hurtado observed the reckoning around clerical abuse taking place years later, he went public with his accusations, including to El País.
The Montserrat Abbey, through an independent report in 2019, acknowledged multiple cases of sexual abuse committed by Soler over decades. But Hurtado said it did not assume any responsibility to formally compensate victims “because everything is time-barred, both criminally and civilly.”
Hurtado said he is disappointed that Leo will visit the monastery despite the abuse allegations, which he has detailed to the Vatican and other church authorities.
He fears the new system could leave many victims in the dark.
“The problem is that it’s built on sand,” Hurtado said.
https://apnews.com/article/catholic-chur...ae75172446
Spain’s long-delayed reckoning with sexual abuse within the Catholic Church entered a new phase this year with the launch of a reparations program for cases that involve accused clergy members who have died and whose alleged crimes are too old to be prosecuted.
With El País’ creation in 2018 of a database of clergy sexual abuse cases, Spain began confronting a legacy of abuse by priests and cover-up by generations of bishops and religious superiors. It did so later than other Western countries, including the United States, Ireland and Australia.
As the database grew, so did public outrage, with Spain’s ombudsman tasked by Parliament to investigate how widespread the issue was. In 2023, the ombudsman delivered a damning 800-page report estimating there were hundreds of thousands of possible victims of church sexual abuse in Spain over decades — based on a survey of 8,000 people. The report also examined 487 known cases.
In 2024, the bishops unilaterally created a system to assist victims on a case-by-case basis. It came months after the Spanish government announced its intention to force the church to compensate victims, accusing the church of minimizing the problem. It said the church’s in-house system was ineffective in part because it lacked outside oversight.
For that reason, many victims said they didn’t want to directly approach the church.
Earlier this year, the bishops conference said it had paid around 2 million euros ($2.3 million) to victims, but understood some victims’ discomfort. It acknowledged the utility of the new state-church model.
Ahead of Leo’s visit, Spanish activist Miguel Hurtado has cited his own abuse case to highlight its potential weaknesses.
More than two decades ago, Hurtado says that a monk named Andreu Soler sexually molested him when he was a 16-year-old Boy Scout in a group led by Soler at the Montserrat Abbey, an 11th-century Benedictine monastery in the mountains outside Barcelona.
Initially, the monastery persuaded his parents not to report the alleged abuse to authorities, Hurtado said. He tried moving on with his life. But as Hurtado observed the reckoning around clerical abuse taking place years later, he went public with his accusations, including to El País.
The Montserrat Abbey, through an independent report in 2019, acknowledged multiple cases of sexual abuse committed by Soler over decades. But Hurtado said it did not assume any responsibility to formally compensate victims “because everything is time-barred, both criminally and civilly.”
Hurtado said he is disappointed that Leo will visit the monastery despite the abuse allegations, which he has detailed to the Vatican and other church authorities.
He fears the new system could leave many victims in the dark.
“The problem is that it’s built on sand,” Hurtado said.
https://apnews.com/article/catholic-chur...ae75172446
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"
