(MEXICO)
Los Ángeles Press [Ciudad de México, Mexico]
June 17, 2025
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
[Photo above: Flores Martínez, at center in white, with minors during a party in Tlaxcala, Mexico, before the pandemic, 2019. Courtesy of Hernán.]
Aguado Cuesta was the superior of the Order of the Pious Schools from 2009 until his appointment as bishop in Spain, overseeing priests in Mexico.
As superior of his order Aguado Cuesta handled cases of sexual abuse in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries.
Last Sunday, the dioceses of Huesca and Jaca in Spain had a celebration. Pedro Aguado Cuesta formally assumed as new bishop of both jurisdictions. The issue would not be relevant beyond those two rather small cities in Northern Spain, if it was not for the effects it could have over how the Catholic Church handles cases of sexual abuse there and potentially elsewhere.
Aguado was one of Pope Francis’s last appointments as bishop. His was the subject of the daily bulletin issued on March 29, 2025, by the Sala Stampa in Rome.
At face value, his résumé in the Holy See’s brief is impeccable: general superior of the Pious Schools order for three consecutive terms, chair of the Education Commission of the Union of Superiors General, the top institution for the different religious orders in the Catholic Church, and a consultor of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. However, for victims of clergy sexual abuse in Mexico, news about his inauguration in the medieval Cathedral of Jaca were far from good. Quite the opposite.
One of said victims, a Mexican male in his thirties got in touch with Los Angeles Press. He recently filed a complaint at the State Attorney’s office in Mexico City, so he asked to be identified under an assumed name.
Hernán, was in constant contact with now bishop Aguado Cuesta over WhatsApp and other technologies. At some point Aguado Acosta came to Mexico from Venezuela to talk with Hernán and offer him financial support as a reparation. He also offered assurances that the predator priest would not have further access to minors and his duties would be restricted as to prevent him from attacking other minors.
The priest was Miguel Flores Martínez. He had teaching and pastoral duties at different points in Mexico City over the first decade of this century, when Hernán was 11 years old. Flores Martínez was a friend of Hernán’s parents, and Hernán joined the group of altar boys in one of the churches where Flores Martínez was on duty in Mexico City.
Abuse happened over at least three years and despite the fact that it was known to other members of the order of the Pius Schools in Mexico, no actual measures were taken by 2010. As a consequence of the abuse, Hernán suffered from depression and fell prey to the consumption of alcohol and drugs, a frequent symptom in cases of clergy sexual abuse.
The “old” in the new
It is in that regard that Hernán’s abuse is an “old” case turned new as a consequence of Aguado Cuesta’s appointment as new bishop of Huesca-Jaca, Spain.
Hernán required a full year seclusion to overcome addiction and its sequels. It was after he was able to restore a modicum of healthy behavior that he was able to follow the steps to file the Church procedure for these cases. It was at that point that, by September 2019, Aguado Acosta, already then general superior of the order of the Pious Schools got in contact with Hernán.
Hernán and Aguado Cuesta met in a Mexican tourist destination where Hernán currently works in the service industry. It was at that point that Aguado Acosta offered a measure of compensation, only partially fulfilled, as the tuition offered is no longer paid. The then superior general of the Pious Schools order also offered a zero-tolerance approach to enforce “severe” restrictions on Flores Martínez’s ability to access minors.
That is the aspect of his case that seems to bother Hernán the most, as he was able to find evidence of Flores Martínez presiding over masses before and during the pandemic at schools either operated by the Pious Schools order or where the order offers services of chaplaincy.
Hernán shared many of these pictures with us as a proof of the distance that exist between the promises made to survivors of clergy sexual abuse, and the actual enforcement of said rules. The consequence of this deficit is putting minors at risk of becoming, as Hernán was, victims of predatory clergy.
By the end of the pandemic, August 2022, Flores Martínez died. The flagship college of the Pious Schools order in Mexico, the Universidad Cristóbal Colón in Veracruz, published a notice of Flores Martínez’s death (see above), as did as private high school in the state of Tlaxcala where a brother of Flores Martínez is the headmaster (see below) and where the predator priest performed duties as chaplain.
And even more. A requiem Mass was celebrated at one of Chiautempan’s major churches, the minor basilica of Our Lady of Ocotlán. Chiautempan is also the city where the high school is. If that was not enough, the religious activity was presided by Fernando Hernández Avilés, provincial for Mexico of the order and José Luis Sánchez Macías, his vicar for financial matters.
Over the homily, Hernández Avilés portrayed the recently deceased priest as a friend and as a Catholic beyond reproach, and an example for all to follow. His brother, the high school’s headmaster, did too by awarding a prize to an offering marking his brother’s death for the Day of the Dead celebrations in November 2022, at the high school.
Pastoral destinations
There is no way Aguado Cuesta, the now new bishop of Huesca-Jaca, Spain, or Hernández Avilés could claim they were unaware of Miguel Flores Martínez’s abuse of Hernán and, most probably, other faithful under his care in Mexico City, Veracruz, Tlaxcala, to only name the few places it is possible to identify as pastoral destinations during the decades he was an active priest with the Pious Schools order.
They cannot claim to be unaware, because there was a Church probe underway. Also, because at least Aguado Cuesta promised Hernán that there would be restrictions and control over Flores Martínez.
Once again, it should be noted that one of the hardest aspects to figure out what and how happened in cases such as this is the lack of information we have to deal with in Mexico and other Latin American countries, where it is almost impossible to know the actual dates and destinations of priests’ appointments.
Hence the relevance of the recent ruling in Colombia forcing the dioceses and orders there to provide detailed accounts of the whereabouts of the priests serving with them.
As it is usually the case, behind him, on top of bishop Aguado Cuesta, the former superior general of the order, there were also Mexican bishops. That is the case of Carlos Briseño Arch, the current bishop of Veracruz, and Florencio Colín Cruz, the current bishop of Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca.
Hernán identifies both bishops as friends and supporters of Miguel Flores Martínez in Mexico City, during the first decade of this century, and later in the dioceses they currently lead.
It should be noticed that those two bishops share a common trait: both were auxiliary bishops in Mexico City during Norberto Rivera Carrera’s tenure as archbishop in the country’s capital city.
Los Ángeles Press has published partial accounts of the devastating effects of Norberto Rivera Carrera’s tenure in Mexico City in the section “Victims by the hundreds” of the story linked after this paragraph.
For Hernán, who has been able to recover his health, the main issue is not trying to extort financial support from the Pious Schools order, as it is clear they are unwilling to abide by the agreements made with him previously. The main issue, what remains a permanent reminder of his plight is the many lies told by newly minted bishop of Huesca and Jaca, Spain, Pedro Aguado Cuesta.
Regretting the trust
Hernán, as many other survivors of clergy sexual abuse regret the trust they have placed when following the canonical procedure that leaves them open to the inability to, as one of many possible examples, having access to their own files or being aware of the current status of their accusations.
The fact that Aguado Cuesta was one of the last bishops appointed by Pope Francis does not diminish Leo XIV’s own responsibility, as he had a say when Aguado Cuesta’s name came up as a potential bishop for Huesca and Jaca. He was then the prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops and, as such, he had a voice in the process to appoint a new bishop.
Something similar should be said about the procedures followed by the nunciatures to both Mexico and Spain. The nunciature in Mexico City, because it is there where Hernán’s case lies dormant since archbishop Franco Coppola left Mexico to become nuncio in Luxembourg, and archbishop Joseph Spiteri took over.
As previous installments of the weekly series on clergy sexual abuse proved, after Coppola’s departure it looks as if any effort to achieve the most basic goals as far as clergy sexual abuse prevention have been dismissed (see below) by both the nunciature to Mexico and the Mexican conference of Catholic bishops.
The nunciature in Madrid, because it is clear that there are certain aspects of the vetting process to appoint new bishops, as the role of a potential new bishop in previous clergy sexual abuse cases, that seem to remain stuck in the 1980s with no accountability and no actual consequences for the mishandling of cases by candidates to become bishop.
The order claims “to prioritize safety, justice, and care of those entrusted” to them, as described in this page, but there is an abyss of sorts between the carefully crafted paragraphs in the order’s web page, and the actual reality the survivors of clergy sexual abuse face.
For now, the report filed by Hernán at the Mexico City state attorney’s office remains the sole route to achieve a measure of justice in this case. The fact that Flores Martínez died back in 2022 is nothing but a feature of a case where there are institutional responsibilities on top of those of the now deceased predator.