MADRID (SPAIN)
The Olive Press [San Luis de Sabinillas, Spain]
August 30, 2022
By Alex Trelinski
At least 130 Jesuit priests have been accused of committing sexual abuse against children between 1927 and 2012 in Spain.
The El Pais newspaper, as part of its ongoing probe into paedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church in Spain, reported there were at least 160 victims who suffered at the hands of the Jesuits.
El Pais has published details of several cases of abuses using victim statements and witness interviews.
The paper said that the Jesuit who faced the largest number of complaints was Barcelona-born priest Emilio Benedetti.
Benedetti worked in several Jesuit schools and died in 2019.
He’s accused of committing sexual abuse against at least 13 victims between 1969 and 1973but no action was taken against him.
El Pais said the number of Jesuits accused of sexual abuse accounts for 15.4% of the total number of Roman Catholic figures accused of paedophilia and harassment through its contacts with readers and victims.
The Jesuits under their formal name of the Society of Jesus say they knew of 84 victims of sexual abuse committed by members of the religious order in Spain, with 64 Jesuits and four laymen accused of crimes.
The Catholic Church in Spain as a whole has commissioned an internal probe run by a solicitor who said in July that he’d received news of ‘hundreds’ of previously unreported sex abuse cases.
In March, parliamentarians approved the setting up of an independent commission to investigate abuses within the Catholic Church.