VATICAN CITY
Crux
By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent October 3, 2015
ROME — In a handwritten letter by Pope Francis to a survivor of sexual abuse in a Catholic school in Spain that surfaced on Friday, the pontiff said he requested a Church trial against the teacher who allegedly committed the abuse eight years ago.
News of the letter will likely be seen as a sign of the pontiff’s personal involvement in the abuse issue, coming on the heels of a private meeting with five abuse survivors in Philadelphia during his visit to the United States.
The letter is dated Dec. 29, 2014, and is addressed to the father of a 20-year-old who claimed to have been abused between 2008 and 2010 by an official of his school, called Gaztelueta, which is located in Bilbao, Spain.
The institution is run by the Catholic group Opus Dei, typically seen as fairly conservative, and the alleged abuser is an Opus Dei member, technically known as a numerary.
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