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Church in Spain confronts sexual abuse

The Asian Age
February 01, 2015

http://www.asianage.com/international/church-spain-confronts-sexual-abuse-512

Spain’s Catholic church, which has long been accused of silencing cases of priests sexually abusing children, is starting to take a hard line against offenders, spurred by Pope Francis.

A judge in the southern city of Granada on Tuesday charged 10 priests and two Catholic lay workers with sexually abusing altar boys in their care, or being complicit in such acts, from 2004 to 2007.

It is the biggest and most serious paedophilia case involving members of the Catholic Church known so far in Spain.

The case was brought to light by a former altar boy, now 25 and a member of the Catholic institution, Opus Dei, who wrote to the pontiff to say he had been molested.

Pope Francis called the unidentified man to offer the Church’s apology and in November the pontiff said he had ordered a church investigation into the case, saying it had caused him “great pain”.

The young man who wrote to the pope “ever imagined the issue would take on the significance that it did”, his lawyer, Jorge Aguilera Gonzalez, said. “If it wasn’t for the pope’s intervention, it would still have been an important issue, but just one of many.”

Pope Francis has taken a tough stance on clerical child abuse since taking over in 2013 from Benedict XVI, calling it “the shame of the Church”.

The Catholic Church had huge influence in Spain during Francisco Franco’s 1939-75 dictatorship and for decades victims kept quiet about abuse “due to social pressure, the power of the Church”, said Jose Manuel Vidal, head of religious news website Religion Digital.

That explains why, unlike in Germany, Ireland, Mexico or the United States, until now no major cases of paedophilia involving priests have come to light in Spain even though abuse took place.

Nine per cent of all sexual abuse suffered by boys between 1950 and 1970 was carried out by priests, as per a 1994 study by University of Sala-manca professor Felix Lopez for ministry of social affairs.




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