(MEXICO)
El País [Madrid, Spain]
April 20, 2026
By Íñigo Domínguez (Rome), Beatriz Guillén (Mexico), Paola Nagovitch (New York), Juan Miguel Hernández Bonilla (Bogotá), Elena Reina (Madrid) and Caio Ruvenal (Cochabamba).
More than half of the cases are located in Colombia, and the rest in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, the United States, Mexico, and Venezuela
[PHOTO: Manuel Montoro, a victim of abuse within the Church, on April 13.- Paco Puentes]
In 2018, EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia within the Spanish Church and maintains an up-to-date database of all known cases. If you know of any cases that have not yet been reported, you can write to us at: abuses@elpais.es. For cases in Latin America, the address is: abusesamerica@elpais.es
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The investigation that EL PAÍS has undertaken in recent years into clerical pedophilia in the Americas, in which it has already published dozens of cases, continues with the delivery to the Vatican of a report containing 21 testimonies accusing a total of 24 priests, religious members, and laypeople from eight countries. Colombia accounts for more than half of the cases, a total of 13, and the rest are located in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, the United States, Mexico, and Venezuela.
This more than 100‑page report accompanies the sixth dossier of cases from Spain that the newspaper has also submitted to the Holy See, bringing to 841 the number of testimonies gathered in Spain over the past five years. Together, they exceed 1,800 pages. This first case report from the Americas expands the investigative project to the entire continent.
EL PAÍS began preparing these dossiers for the Vatican in 2021 after receiving an overwhelming number of testimonies through its victim‑support email account, which was also opened to readers in the Americas in 2022 (abusosamerica@elpais.es). The initiative emerged from the impossibility of publishing every case and from evidence that most allegations were being covered up locally by dioceses and religious orders.
By compiling the information, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith could be made aware of the complaints and investigate them, as it is required to do whenever it receives any report. Several cases included in this new dossier from the Americas once again show that many allegations never reach Rome, despite the fact that reporting them has been mandatory since 2001. Instead, they have been ignored.
EL PAÍS report on child abuse in the Catholic Church: Cases from the Americas:
[BishopAccountability: Click on the original article to see the table of 24 cases in its original form. Click here to see our cache of the table as a PDF.]
The stories now coming to light reveal that in almost all of the Catholic Church in Latin America, there is still much to be done, in contrast to the progress already made in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Only the Church in Chile has undertaken anything similar to the Ryan Report from Ireland or the MHG/Dressing Report from Germany, according to academics Veronique Lecaros, from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and Ana Lourdes Suárez, from the Catholic University of Argentina, editors of a recent book titled Abusos eclesiales en América Latina. Una crisis en el corazón del catolicismo (Ecclesiastical Abuse in Latin America: A Crisis at the Heart of Catholicism). In 2020, a report published in Chile by the Commission for the Analysis of the Crisis in the Catholic Church documented 568 victims of sexual abuse, 320 of whom were minors, and identified 225 perpetrators.
“In Chile, a series of circumstances forced a more serious approach to the problem,” the academics assert, “but elsewhere, no country has given any indication that it will do anything similar.” The driving force was Pope Francis himself, who personally took charge of the Chile case and forced the entire episcopal leadership to resign in one stroke. It was an exception — the result of the Argentine pontiff’s own determination — alongside the investigation and dissolution of the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana in Peru.
The EL PAÍS investigation seeks to break through that wall of silence. In this new report on cases in the Americas, the identities of those who provided testimony are withheld, but the newspaper will share them with Church authorities if requested once an investigation is opened and the individual gives consent. Some of the accused could not be identified because the person giving testimony does not remember — something that is common in cases of child sexual abuse. Even so, their accounts contain details that may allow the Church to identify them.
Mexico: Abuses during confession at a school
This is the case of Nadja Fernández, a former student at the Ignacio L. Vallarta School in the metropolitan area of Mexico City, run by the Congregation of the Daughters of the Holy Spirit, back when the school was located in Lomas de Chapultepec. She recounts having suffered abuse between 1997 and 1998, when she was eight years old, at the hands of a priest whose name she no longer remembers.
“It was an all-girls school in an area where exclusivity and power were palpable, and those of us who didn’t meet those standards were humiliated by classmates, teachers, and nuns,” says Fernández. One of the routines at the school was confession. The nuns would enter the classrooms and, if no one volunteered, they would choose a girl themselves. Instead of a traditional confessional with a lattice separating the priest and the penitent, Fernández describes “a small cubicle, about two meters by two, with two chairs facing each other.”
She remembers that the priest was tall, blond, and spoke with a strong Argentine accent, and that at first he asked her personal questions — what she watched on television, what she feared most. “After one or two confessions, that’s when the first rape happened. I didn’t scream or cry because I didn’t really understand what was happening, but I felt fear and shame, and I knew something was wrong. When he finished, he straightened his cassock and told me, ‘If you say anything, your father will die.’” She had told him that her father was the person she loved most in the world. She never dared tell anyone.
“From that moment on, most of the time I was sent to him, the abuse was repeated: he took advantage of that confined space to touch me, ask me vulgar questions about my body, and force me to touch him,” she says. “The abuse lasted two years, until I turned 10. One day, when he saw me come in, he told me that this would be goodbye, because I was ‘too old’ for him now,” she adds. Fernández believes that this abuse led her to develop eating disorders “so that I would stop being attractive to him.”
Years later, during a therapy session, the memories came flooding back. She told her family, and her twin sister, who had studied with her, said she had also been a victim. Fernández believes that “the school authorities knew what was happening” and is willing to identify the perpetrator if any photographs or videos from that time surface. “I’m not seeking revenge,” she concludes, “but rather to have it documented that in that tiny cubicle, a priest used confession as a pretext to abuse me when I was eight years old.”
For scholars Veronique Lecaros and Ana Lourdes Suárez, cases within the Latin American Catholic Church share features with those in other countries but also reflect a distinct “socio‑ecclesiastical” context. “As in other parts of the world, new communities that have formed around very strong leadership, with a membership characterized by blind obedience and closed-group control, often end up with abuse of power and sexual abuse,” they say in a joint interview.
They cite the cases of the Legionaries of Christ in Mexico, the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana in Peru, the Arautos do Evangelho (Heralds of the Gospel) in Brazil, the group surrounding Fernando Karadima in Chile, the Discípulos de San Juan Bautista (Disciples of St. John the Baptist) in Argentina, and the Comunidad de Jerusalén (Jerusalem Community) in Uruguay. “They have in common that their founders were accused of sexual abuse,” say the academics. The EL PAÍS report includes extensive testimony from a former member of the Heralds of the Gospel who recounts cases of abuse in various countries.
In addition to these communities — often linked to power groups and the far right — there is another context for abuse in parishes located in marginalized areas. “There, when it happens, since the priest is essentially a local strongman with considerable power over the population, the victims don’t dare to report it because they don’t have sufficient social capital,” they reflect.
They cite the case of Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas in Bolivia, revealed by EL PAÍS in 2023. The scandal came to light because Pedrajas had left a personal diary describing his abuse of approximately 85 minors at a boarding school. “Those children would never have reported it, as it was beyond their comprehension,” they explain. Other contexts where these abuses have been detected include seminaries and formation houses, as well as parishes and schools.
Argentina: 15 complaints in a scout group in Buenos Aires
In Argentina, there’s a prime example in the Boy Scouts of Our Lady of Luján Parish in Longchamps, south of Buenos Aires. Nicolás Sisman joined the group as a child in the mid-1980s. There he met the 15 or so young men who, decades later, remain his close friends.
Since some of them don’t live in Argentina — Ángel lives in Spain; Sebastián, in Colombia — they took advantage of the pandemic to reconnect via WhatsApp. The idea was the same as always: to talk. But when the possibility of inviting the man who had been their scout leader between the ages of 14 and 18 came up, they also broke open a trauma they had silently shared for decades.
[PHOTO – Jorge Izumigawa, Ariel Gavilán, David Pittaluga, Nicolás Sisman, Diego Baracat y Gabriel Oppido (from left to right), who report having been abused in childhood within the scout group of the Parroquia Nuestra Señora de Luján in Longchamps, Buenos Aires, pose last Thursday at the home of one of them. – Mariana Nedelcu]
The WhatsApp group is still called “Survivors.” They survived the alleged abuse by Omar Esposito, whom the 15 friends — one of whom has since died — ultimately reported to the Argentine justice system with a harrowing account of those years of silence. “Secrecy is part of the Scouts. When Omar said, ‘What’s said here, stays here,’ you left believing it was part of the Scout mystique, not part of the modus operandi of a depraved man,” Sisman told EL PAÍS. Esposito has not responded to this newspaper’s messages.
The modus operandi required the boys to masturbate in a group, put on a condom — education about prophylaxis was one of the excuses — and then show it to him, the head scout leader, so he could check how much they had ejaculated. This happened not only in camps but also in his own home, not far from the parish, on the marital bed. Another of his phrases was: “What doesn’t go into your head goes in through your anus,” Sisman recalls.
An Argentine judge referred the case to a Juicio por la Verdad (Truth Trial), a procedural path similar to the one used years ago to address crimes committed during the dictatorship. But the process is currently suspended because the court responsible for hearing the case has refused to proceed, claiming that the statute of limitations on the crimes has expired. The survivors have filed a complaint against the court for dereliction of duty.
The Diocese of Lomas de Zamora, which oversees the Longchamps parish and the Scout group, acknowledged the events in a meeting with the complainants and through a document obtained by EL PAÍS. “The representatives of the Diocesan Team state that they believe the victims regarding the reported events,” the document reads, “and offer the victims spiritual and psychological support as victims of sexual abuse.” “They also commit to continuing to publicize what happened between 1980 and 1999, in order to identify any other victims of the accused,” it concludes.
The meeting took place at the diocesan headquarters in Lomas de Zamora and was attended, among others, by Héctor Eduardo Laffeuillade, parish priest and head of the diocese’s multidisciplinary team for assisting victims of sexual crimes. “The first thing we told them was that we believed them, and we asked their forgiveness on behalf of the Church. They had been bound to silence by the control this man exercised over them, which is a constant in this type of abuse,” Laffeuillade acknowledges in a phone conversation with this newspaper.
The catechist was immediately removed from all duties within the Church. However, the multidisciplinary team ended up resigning because Church officials did not act on the complaint. “Yes, that’s what some [team members] said,” admits Laffeuillade himself, who nevertheless reiterates his support for the complainants. Despite this, the victims have not received any compensation.
“I can’t understand how he had so much power over us,” says Ángel Maximiliano Queirolo, another of the complainants, who currently lives in Spain, speaking by phone. “I never once spoke about it with anyone. We’re talking about a group of friends, for example, who are three brothers. He abused all three of them, and none of them ever spoke about it among themselves. One of them, the oldest, even filed a complaint first, and then withdrew it. We don’t know why, and there was never an explanation,” Queirolo adds. “Being able to speak out and report it was, in a way, being able to start living again,” says Diego Bacarat, a librarian and another of the friends who filed a complaint. “I feel like I was dead inside for 30 years,” he adds.
Lecaros and Suárez indicate that, unlike in the “global north,” where the priest’s sacred power manifests itself during the sacraments, in Latin America, his magic extends beyond the Eucharist or extreme unction. “There is an enchanted atmosphere, where the clergyman is asked, for example, to bless almost anything, becoming a figure who can bring about substantial changes and bring people closer to God. This, combined with the fact that they often act as mediators with the state and its aid programs, gives them power within popular religiosity,” they explain.
El Salvador: Salesians admit to abuse at a school in the 1980s
In El Salvador, this newspaper’s report includes three testimonies detailing abuse that occurred between 1979 and 1985 at the Ricaldone Technical Institute in the capital city of San Salvador. The victims accuse the Salesian priest Giuseppe Corò, and the Salesian congregation, when consulted about the case, admits that it removed him in 2007 amid suspicions of abuse and sent him to Rome, where, the order claims, he had no further contact with minors. Then, in 2019, two complaints resulted in a canonical conviction. The individuals who filed those complaints are two of the people who spoke with this newspaper: José Napoleón Lemus Guzmán and Patrick Castro Salazar.
The victims were between 14 and 17 years old, and their accounts describe a consistent modus operandi: approaching students who were struggling academically and offering solutions to their problems in exchange for sexual favors.
[PHOTO: Patrick Castro Salazar, who reported abuses at the Ricaldone Technical Institute in El Salvador, at his home in Los Angeles last Thursday. – Gabriel Osorio]
“I was a victim of abuse by Giuseppe Corò when he was the headmaster, and I was a student at the school,” says Lemus Guzmán, who is now over 55 years old. “I have dyslexia and struggled in class. The priest would approach anyone who was having problems and told me to come find him in his office after school,” he explains. “I arrived, knocked on the door, and it opened immediately. He was waiting in the doorway. He grabbed my hand, dragged me into the office, and right there, he started kissing and touching me all over. He pushed me to the floor, was about to take off his pants, and I started crying,” Lemus describes. “Then he stopped and said to me, calmly, as if it were perfectly normal: ‘I want this to happen at least once a month, and I guarantee you’ll graduate; I want you to enjoy it and participate,’” he recalls.
Reynaldo Cortés Figueroa, 60, tells a virtually identical story. “I was having problems at school, and he summoned me to his office at 6 p.m.,” Cortés begins. He recalls that Corò closed the blinds, took his hands, and told him they were going to pray for the Virgin Mary to guide them. “Suddenly, I felt his breathing as if he were getting aroused, and he brought his lips close to mine, but I pushed him away forcefully. He threw me out of the office, and the next day I was expelled,” he recounts.
[PHOTO – The Salesian Giuseppe Corò, canonically convicted for pedophilia at the Ricaldone Technical Institute in El Salvador, in an image from the 1980s. – Cedida]
Cortés was a friend of his classmate Patrick Castro Salazar, 61. He suffered abuse on several occasions between 1979 and 1982. He also had problems with his studies. He helped with extracurricular activities like preparing the high school yearbook, which meant he spent time alone with Corò, who was around 40 at the time. “When I told him my troubles, he would hug me; there came a point when his penis would get hard, and I could feel it,” he explains. “On several occasions, he tried to kiss me, and more than once we ended up on the floor.” Later, he discovered that a relative of his had also been abused by the priest.
According to information provided by the Salesians, Corò passed through Guatemala in 1964 before his ordination. He then lived in El Salvador until 1990, when he returned to Rome. He then lived in Costa Rica between 1994 and 1997. After returning again to the Italian capital, he stayed in Saltillo, Mexico, between 2002 and 2007, until the first suspicions of abuse arose there, at which point he returned permanently to Italy.
Spanish priests accused of abuse sent to Latin America
In the sixth report on cases in Spain compiled by EL PAÍS, released simultaneously with the report on the Americas, there are also Spanish clergymen accused of abuse who were transferred to Latin America. In one case, that of Father J. G. Z., assigned to the Spanish diocese of Santander, he is accused of assaulting a minor in Cuba, in the town of Sancti Spíritus, in the diocese of Santa Clara, between 1996 and 1998.
Among the Jesuits, there are two additional cases. The first is J. A. S., accused at the Sarrià school in Barcelona, and who, according to the account of a former student, was sent to Ecuador after the father of another minor protested. The order says it has no record that a complaint was the reason for the transfer, but confirms that this Jesuit spent the years 1958 to 1968 in the South American country — in Quito, Guayaquil, and Portoviejo.
Another Jesuit from the same school is Father J. A. M. E., who was accused by a former student of abuse dating back to 1966–1967. The Jesuits admit that there were two complaints against him in 2012 at a summer camp he organized in Bolivia, a country where he had lived between 1991 and 1992. He was accused by two girls who traveled there as volunteers, and as a result, he was removed from contact with minors as a precautionary measure.
A fourth testimony points to a priest from Linares, province of Jaén, J. F. J., who is accused of abuse between 1967 and 1969. According to one individual, after his father reported him to the bishopric, the priest was sent to Central America.
With reporting by Íñigo Domínguez (Rome), Beatriz Guillén (Mexico), Paola Nagovitch (New York), Juan Miguel Hernández Bonilla (Bogotá), Elena Reina (Madrid) and Caio Ruvenal (Cochabamba).