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El País [Madrid, Spain]
August 1, 2025
By Julio Núñez
The documentation seized by the police includes letters and complaints of sexual assault against at least a dozen priests, whose crimes were covered up by the Catholic congregation
EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia within the Catholic Church in 2018 and maintains an updated database with all known cases. If you know of any case that hasn’t received attention, you can write to us at: abusos@elpais.es. If it’s a case in Latin America, the address is: abusamerica@elpais.es.
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A judicial investigation in Bolivia against two senior officials of the Catholic congregation Society of Jesus (also known as Jesuits) who are accused of covering up for the Spanish pedophile priest Alfonso Pedrajas – has uncovered up to a dozen cases, eight of which have never been reported before. These deal with the sexual abuse of minors committed by religious leaders, which the Jesuit hierarchy has concealed since the 1980s.
The documentation, seized in April of 2023 by Bolivian police officers who searched the Society’s headquarters in La Paz and Cochabamba, contains dozens of letters and internal reports from the Order. These prove how the religious organization’s hierarchy – among whom there are the two provincial superiors currently in the dock, Spanish citizens Ramon Alaix and Marcos Recolons – received internal complaints and decided to cover up the crimes, transfer the accused to another parish, or buy the victims’ silence.
The file seized by the agents – which EL PAÍS has had access to – contains more than 4,000 pages of documentation showing how, for decades, the Society of Jesus was aware of some of the cases of pedophilia uncovered by this newspaper. Additionally, there are documents that reveal how matters affecting the Catholic Church’s image and reputation were handled internally, such as the sexual relationships that several Jesuits maintained with adult women, along with unwanted pregnancies and the alcoholism troubles plaguing some members. Regarding some of these episodes, there are letters in which the high-ranking members of the Jesuit Order in Bolivia describe their actions to Peter Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Society of Jesus from 1983 to 2008, and ask for his advice.
Access to this type of information is restricted, as Church archives are closed to the public and, in some cases, even to the authorities. In Spain, for example, this documentation is protected by the Vatican Agreement between Spain and the Holy See, making it impossible for law enforcement agents to enter the archives to seize material. In Bolivia, where this agreement doesn’t exist, the files are in the hands of the Cochabamba Criminal Court for Anti-Corruption and Violence against Women No. 4. The documents are being presented as evidence in the trial against Alaix and Recolons, which resumed this past Friday with the testimony of several witnesses, after the court had heard from the defendants.
This is the only remaining proceeding from the clerical pedophilia scandal that broke out in Bolivia two years ago. It all began after EL PAÍS published an article about the diary of Spanish priest Alfonso Pedrajas, who died in 2009. In his diary, he admitted to abusing at least 85 children at the Juan XXIII school in Cochabamba, while describing how his superiors, especially the two now in the dock, protected him.
The two defendants held the position of provincial superior (the highest position in the Society of Jesus within a country, whose mandate can often be extended for several years) during the periods when the most complaints against Pedrajas reached the Order. Recolons held the position from 1993 to 1999, while Alaix was provincial superior between 1999 and 2007. The former also served as the Order’s number two in Rome, in the General Curia of the Vatican, between 2004 and 2012.
In his memoirs, the pedophile Jesuit describes the plan he followed to reveal this abuse to Recolons in the late 1990s. The diary contains key phrases used to describe sexual assaults: “F. without consent.” “I didn’t see the consequences from all that.” “Isolated incidents.” In the case of Alaix, Pedrajas cites him several times in the 2000s, describing how he covered up at least two complaints. He asked Alaix to transfer him to Valencia, in Spain, to get away from it all. Years later, in 2008, the Spanish pedophile wrote that his superior canceled an event meant to honor him, due to the abuse allegations.
The EL PAÍS report prompted the Prosecutor’s Office, the attorney general, the Ministry of Education and even Bolivian President Luis Arce to announce the opening of an investigation. Since then, around 20 victims have reported that Pedrajas sexually assaulted them. The dates range from 1972 to the early 2000s. After several months of investigating, the Prosecutor’s Office in Cochabamba charged Recolons and Alaix with concealment of information.
However, their testimony before the judge didn’t take place until two weeks ago, after being postponed several times due to the defendants’ ages (Alaix is 83 and Recolons, 81). In front of the judge, both claimed they only learned about the case through EL PAÍS. However, their statements contradict what’s written in the documentation seized by the police.
Agents found emails from 2009, in which a former student of Pedrajas reported to a superior of the Order that the priest had abused minors. The student urged that an investigation be opened. “I hope you can do something to remedy this stain on the Society [of Jesus] and [offer] a public apology,” the email states. But nothing happened. At the time, Recolons was a senior official in Rome, while Alaix was finishing his tenure as provincial superior.
Later, in 2019, during a canonical investigation against another priest led by Recolons, a Jesuit priest testified that, in the 1980s, he informed the then-provincial superior of Pedrajas’ abuse. He noted that the provincial superior only temporarily removed Pedrajas from his duties. In other words, both Recolons and Alaix learned of Pedrajas’s sexual assaults on several occasions and via different channels.
Evidence against a dozen Jesuits
Of the eight unpublished cases that appear in the documents seized by the police, the most notable one involves the Jesuit Pancho Flores, a priest of Bolivian origin, who was accused of sexually assaulting “a young boy.” Alaix then wrote a letter to the superior general of the Jesuits in Rome to inform him about what had happened: “A young man came to the [provincial superior] of the community and told him that the priest who lived in the [main] room had invited him to his room and had abused him. He also told him that Father Flores went out some nights in his van and invited young people to accompany him. The young man needed money (…) and the [provincial superior] gave him a small amount, which he later regretted and told me about.” Alaix asked Kolvenbach for advice, suggesting that “it would be advisable to give [Flores] a new assignment” and “a sabbatical year,” accompanied by psychological therapy.
The leader of the Jesuits in Rome sent him a long letter discussing chastity. Flores was never removed; in fact, he even held the position of assistant secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Bolivia in 2004. Another notable case is that of the Jesuit with the initials “R. B.” In the early 2000s, a community superior wrote a letter to Alaix, denouncing that R.B. was having [sexual relations] with a 14-year-old girl. He also informed Alaix that he had intercepted several of the letters that the pedophile priest was sending to his victim.
The other initials that appear are F. Q., accused of abusing an altar boy in Potosí; J. V., accused of raping a woman for 32 years (since she was a minor); and the Jesuits V. T., M. G., H. A. and E. V., all accused of abusing novices (young men who had been admitted into the Order.)
In addition to these unprecedented cases, other stories uncovered by EL PAÍS have come to light in recent years, in which other Jesuits of Spanish origin, also accused of pedophilia, were protected by the Bolivian and Spanish Catholic Church hierarchy. Some were even protected by the Vatican. There are also references to them in documents found by the Bolivian authorities. Among them, the case of Luis Tó stands out. Recolons arranged for his transfer out of Catalonia to cover up the scandal that arose after a Barcelona court sentenced him to two years in prison for abusing a child.
Translated by Avik Jain Chatlani.