BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Los Ángeles Press [Ciudad de México, Mexico]
May 18, 2026
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
Former Catholic priest Justo José Ilarraz loved to use Old Spice cologne, a scent his victims of sexual abuse have a hard time forgetting.
Hernán René Rausch, an Argentine survivor of clergy sexual abuse has been fighting his case for 34 years now.
Ilarraz was already laicized by Pope Francis in 2024, so he is a predator. The Argentine judiciary itself acknowledges his abuse. The issue is the statute of limitations.
After the awful news coming from Chile, where a major case of documented clergy sexual abuse was declared as prescribed by the courts, that was the subject of this series installment, news from Argentina offers a ray of hope for victims of sexual abuse, clergy or otherwise, whose crimes have followed similar patterns all over Latin America.
The case is one promoted by the victims of Justo José Ilarraz, a now former Catholic priest who used to offer his services and perpetrate his abuses in the archdiocese of Paraná, 230 miles or 370 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.
The case stands as one of the most painful, institutionally damaging, and legally paradoxical chapters in the history of clergy sexual abuse within the Catholic Church at large.
What makes Ilarraz’s case particularly painful for the Catholic Church, more so than other systemic failures of accountability, is how it represents the intersection of religious authority, generational trauma, and the complex legacy of Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-83).
The institutional rot exposed by the case was compounded by the fact that it unfolded in the Archdiocese of Paraná under the leadership of Estanislao Esteban Karlic, a figure otherwise revered for his consistent defense of human rights.
From 1985 to 1993, Ilarraz served as a tutor, professor, and spiritual guide at the Paraná Minor Seminary. Two years before, John Paul II had appointed Karlic as coadjutor bishop of the archdiocese of Paraná, at the time ruled with an iron fist by Adolfo Servando Tortolo, who besides his role in Paraná was the almighty bishop of the Military diocese.
It would be impossible to offer a thorough assessment of what was happening at Paraná at the time, suffice to say that Pope Paul VI appointed Tortolo as head of the Military diocese on July 7, 1975, with Estela Martínez’s approval. She had become President on July 1, 1974, after Juan Doming Perón’s death. Tortolo assumed the Military diocese less than nine months before the March 24, 1976 Military coup.
Paraná was, by all accounts, a Catholic stronghold at the time. The Catholic Church maintained an extensive footprint in the province of Entre Ríos, north of the humid pampa, at very heart of the Mesopotamian plains, a region matching the extreme agricultural fertility of the neighboring humid pampa, among the best in the world.
Archbishop Tortolo used this isolated, highly conservative environment to shelter a specific cohort of opportunistic and troubled clerics. Priests like Justo José Ilarraz and Carlos Miguel Buela (the founder of the Institute of the Incarnate Word) had clashed with or been quietly expelled by the more mainstream archdioceses of Buenos Aires and Córdoba.
Tortolo, serving simultaneously as the almighty bishop of the Military diocese, welcomed them into Paraná, building a haven for hardline clergy. While Tortolo remained too traditional to openly defy Pope Paul VI, the structural chaos and brewing scandals under his watch did not escape Rome’s notice forever.
Buela would move from Paraná further to the west, closer to the Chilean border, to “find refuge” in the diocese of San Rafael. That diocese is still recovering from the devastating influence of the founder of the Institute of the Incarnate Word and other former professors at Paraná who declared war on Pope Francis.
Pope Francis himself explained (content in Spanish) why he was forced to close that seminary in San Rafael, a crisis that echoes in more than one respect the earlier experience in Paraná where Ilarraz took teenagers as hostages of his own appetites.
Inviting trouble
By bringing these figures into the local seminary, Tortolo was inviting long-term institutional disaster not just for Paraná, but for the global Catholic Church.
Recognizing the mounting administrative and moral rot, Pope John Paul II eventually bypassed Tortolo’s authority through a precise canonical maneuver. In 1983, instead of granting Tortolo a standard auxiliary bishop who would remain under the archbishop’s thumb, Rome appointed Estanislao Esteban Karlic as coadjutor bishop.
This distinction was vital: as coadjutor, Karlic possessed the automatic right of succession and immediate administrative weight, signaling that Rome had Tortolo’s number and was actively transitioning power away from the dictatorship’s favorite prelate.
It was under this tense, transitional hierarchy that Ilarraz operated his perverted system of grooming. As professor in Paraná, Ilarraz had absolute, unmediated access to vulnerable male teens aged 12 to 15, many of whom came from humble, deeply traditional country families—including local ethnic German and Polish colonies—who viewed the priesthood as the highest moral calling.
Far from offering pastoral guidance, Ilarraz used his religious authority and a selected repertoire of psychological behaviorist tricks of the era to construct a perverse system of grooming.
Following similar patterns observed before in the Mexican Legion of Christ and after in the Peruvian Sodalitium and the aforementioned Institute of the Incarnate Word, he bound his victims to silence through a distorted theology of obedience, reframing severe abuse, including sexual rape as private, spiritual pacts.
This was happening in Paraná at a time when Karlic, already by 1986 in charge of the archdiocese, had done his best to distance himself from Tortolo’s legacy of close relationships, even complicity, with the military dictatorship.
There were cases where the priests associated to the Military diocese would go as far as to break the seal of confession to offer the military leadership information, data, to carry attacks on groups the Military Junta had labeled its enemies. One such case, documented and prosecuted in Argentina is that of Christian von Wernich, a chaplain in the Argentine Military diocese.
During the darkest years of the military dictatorship, when large sectors of the Catholic hierarchy explicitly condoned, ignored, or facilitated state terrorism, as in Tortolo’s case, Karlic and other prelates stood out as defenders of human rights.
When the first internal reports emerged within the seminary in the early 1990s, the ecclesiastical apparatus defaulted to institutional preservation rather than criminal exposure. A secret diocesan investigation conducted in the mid-1990s found Ilarraz guilty of abuse, yet the canonical remedy applied was nothing short of a systemic cover-up.
Instead of being stripped of his priesthood and turned over to secular prosecutors, Ilarraz was sent to Rome to pursue advanced theological studies. He later held significant administrative roles in Europe before returning to Argentina, where he quietly resumed public priestly ministry in other jurisdictions under a strict mandate only to avoid Paraná.
Profound irony
The profound irony of this containment strategy lies in the identity of the local hierarchy. Paraná had been shaped by the legacy of leadership figures such as Karlic, often categorized among the few “good bishops” of recent Argentine history.
This historic moral capital made the subsequent revelation of what was happening at the seminary an exponentially more devastating betrayal. The very institutional mechanisms, moral authority, and networks of trust forged to combat state oppression were later deployed to suppress the testimonies of child sexual abuse survivors.
The tragic paradox meant that a hierarchy universally celebrated for standing up to the absolute power of a murderous military junta ultimately lacked the institutional courage to confront a predatory priest within its own cloisters. For the victims, this created an agonizing psychological barrier: coming forward meant exposing a system led by figures who symbolized the nation’s moral conscience. Keeping quiet meant becoming an accomplice of another form of systematic abuse of human rights.
The wall of silence finally fractured in 2012, when a group of survivors, by then already adults, filed formal criminal complaints in secular courts. What followed was a protracted, exhausting legal battle that exposed the profound limitations and contradictions of both the Argentine judiciary and Catholic Church.
In 2018, a provincial court sentenced Ilarraz to 25 years in prison for aggravated sexual abuse. However, the defense immediately weaponized the statute of limitations (prescripción), arguing that decades had passed since the commission of the crimes.
The legal battle culminated in a controversial decision by the Supreme Court of Argentina, which effectively washed its hands of the matter. The court issued a superficial, technically rigid ruling that let Ilarraz walk free through a statute of limitations dismissal. Later, in 2024, Pope Francis would formalize the end of Ilarraz’s career as Catholic priest. A previous installment of this series went over some other details of Ilarraz’s case and that of Raúl Sidders. The story is linked after this paragraph.
Crucially, the dismissal did not vindicate his innocence; it merely declared that the clock had run out. This generated a massive crisis of credibility, effectively signaling to predatory clergy that if they could suppress testimonies long enough, the state would eventually guarantee their impunity. A PDF file of the Supreme Court is available, only in Spanish, after this paragraph.
Please see original article for the PDF file.
In a further twist of institutional dissonance, the Vatican—under Pope Francis—officially re-opened an internal trial following the secular conviction and fully laicized Ilarraz, permanently expelling him from the clerical state in 2024. Thus, a striking paradox emerged: while the Roman Catholic Church formally stated it wanted nothing more to do with the former priest, the secular Argentine state pulled a technical loophole out of its sleeve to block justice.
Pushing the battle
Refusing to accept this institutional slap in the face, a core group of four survivors pushed the battle into the international arena. In recent developments, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) officially admitted their complaint, opening the door for the case to be litigated before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. By framing the state’s failure to prosecute as a structural violation of international child protection and human rights frameworks, the Paraná survivors have transformed their local trauma into a landmark international precedent, directly challenging the state-sanctioned impunity that shields institutional abuse across Latin America.
What follows is an edited transcription of a conversation Los Ángeles Press had with Hernán René Rausch, a member of the Argentine Network of those Abused by Priests, a survivor of Justo José Ilarraz, whose case will be reviewed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights with the expectation of forcing a change in the Argentine Supreme Court ruling that as such had the potential to impact all Latin America where similar cases have had similar outcomes, as last week’s regarding José Francisco Cox Huneeus and before that the one dealing with former Jesuit but still a priest Felipe Berríos, both from Chile.
Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez: Thank you, Hernán. Regarding your case linked to Justo José Ilarraz, I am very interested in your opinion on the latest ruling—that of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to accept your case and reconsider the decision of the Supreme Court of Argentina.
Right now, I am particularly interested in how the Argentine justice system washes its hands and declares itself incapable of providing justice to the victims. This is even more serious because the Vatican has already laicized him, something it does not do for everyone; take the case of Julio César Grassi, who remains formally a priest. Therefore, Ilarraz must have done something incredibly severe for the Vatican to laicize him.
Yet, in a paradoxical decision, the Argentine justice system has imprisoned Grassi, who committed very serious crimes, while the Argentine Episcopal Conference still keeps him as a priest. Conversely, with Ilarraz, whom the Catholic Church wants nothing more to do with, the Argentine justice system pulls this ruling out of its sleeve.
So, it is that specific aspect, along with references to the concrete ordeal you lived through, that I would like to consider with you.
You were one of several victims who stepped forward and pointed out what had happened to you. Thus, it is that aspect of the testimony that interests me. Especially to emphasize why it is so important that you, the Argentine victims of Ilarraz, are the ones taking this case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
A venue where, furthermore, there are already other cases, such as one from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, plus those that will pile up from all over Latin America in the coming months, which I imagine will be quite a few.
New developments
So, if you would like to briefly introduce yourself, present the situation, and explain how you see things now with these new developments.
Hernán René Rausch: Well, thank you. Thank you for reaching out first. My name is Hernán René Rausch, and I am a survivor-victim of the now former priest Justo José Ilarraz.
As you rightly said, I believe that Pope Francis himself coming forward and applying the sanction by reducing him to the laical state is an indicator of the grave circumstances that took place in the seminary during that era.
It is worth noting that a first investigation already took place back in the ’90s, where he was found guilty and sent into exile—meaning he was removed from the seminary, then sent to Rome, did his studies, and even held important positions within the Church in Rome. He then returned to Argentina, and the punishment he received was merely not to return to Paraná and to have no contact with seminarians, yet he resumed exercising the priestly ministry. Therefore, the fact that Pope Francis flagged this and reduced him also indicated and manifested the poor handling carried out back then, because even then the Code of Canon Law indicated that removing him from the priesthood was warranted, and they did not do it.
So, here there is also a suspicion that there was manipulation, in favor of some, to prevent these actions from being carried out. In that context, what followed was, of course, the criminal complaint and the criminal trial, through which he was also found guilty.
And following this investigation that emerged in the criminal court, the Church reopened the case and initiated an administrative trial; meaning, it verified the different steps they took back then to see how the situation had concluded. And that was the conclusion: these were extremely grave acts that warranted expulsion from the clerical state or reduction to the laical state, which is what Pope Francis carried out.
Abuse at the seminary
RSN: Right, because the abuse occurred precisely within the context of a seminary in Paraná, correct?
HRR: It was a house for the formation of priests. I always say, perhaps it harmed small vocations that would have become great priests. That is the magnitude of the gravity of the situation. And that is what drives me: faith and the belief to stand firm in faith, hope, and the truth of clearing up this situation. We have been fighting under these circumstances for years, and I already reported it back in the seminary.
RSN: How many years have you been fighting this issue?
HRR: I made my first report at 16 years old, in the year 1992.
And today we continue the search for justice. And they recognize the guilt and declare him guilty, right? Because what happened with Ilarraz is a statute of limitations dismissal. When they indicate it is dismissed by a statute of limitations, they are not saying he is not guilty. They are saying time passed, so we let him go free despite his guilt. Meaning, there is absolutely no doubt that Ilarraz is guilty of child abuse.
RSN: 34 years in this problem.
HRR: Yes. And being fully aware that this needs a solution, it needs a ray of hope. Perhaps we, our generation, will not see it, but as Dr. Abel Albino—a defender and pediatrician—says out there, these are works, whether at a political level or whatever, not for future elections, but for future generations; we have to think about that too, right? So, it is a collective effort to raise awareness, to renew ourselves regarding what rights mean. That is why we held those meetings and decided: we are going to push forward; we are going to continue.
We made it this far and justice slapped us across the face, but we stood right back up and said, we are going to present it, we are going to develop it with all the guidelines, with all the requirements, and the details of what took place.
Because Argentine justice—the Supreme Court—was very superficial, very light when it ruled; it went off on a tangent, so to speak, and that is why it claimed the statute of limitations applied. It did not perform a deep analysis of the child rights violations, nor of something that in these cases is so critical: human rights.
That is why we have the conviction, the faith, and the hope that thanks to the fact that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights opened the door for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to take up our case, ahead of so many other causes, it is because they have recognized the gravity of the matter.
Collective struggles
RSN: Of course. How many victims are pursuing this cause?
HRR: We are all in this, every single one of us, but we are four who actually presented it. There are those who were victims of Ilarraz, but this is something that already transcended to a provincial and national level in Argentina.
Here, it is already a collective struggle. It is a network we are all in, right? We are at the forefront, but there are a lot of people keeping a close eye on this situation. Even following the ruling of the Supreme Court of Argentina, other trials that were coming up or were about to enter were affected by the ruling, which is why appeals have been filed.
Now, because of that ruling, there is also a sense of helplessness that hits us, you know? How many victims are starting to feel fear and choose not to report. And I invite people to speak, to report, to express, to get it out, because we bear absolutely no blame for what they did to us—not us, and they even abused our families, taking advantage of this too…
RSN: And this occurs in Argentina right in the middle of a debate over a law to punish alleged “false reports,” right?
HRR: Now that dilemma emerged too. I just recently started informing myself on that topic, but I know that bills have been presented questioning that side of things as well.
RSN: Which, of course, would only make it harder precisely for people to be willing to step forward, right?
HRR: Exactly, because they would do so with fear, or they simply wouldn’t be willing to do it because they would be afraid.
RSN: Right…
HRR: These are situations that occur in private settings, in private instances; obviously, they do not do it in public. So, it is something where you are effectively locked in a room, in a bathroom, wherever, and it is private, nobody else is there. And with the aggravating factor that they tell you, “Don’t tell anyone This is our secret, yours and mine.”
They tell you: “this is our secret,” and we are talking about teens, 12 or 13 years old, right in the middle of adolescence and development. They are just beginning to develop as adolescents, as young people.
Authority figure
RSN: Right. And facing what you somehow saw as an authority figure, right?
HRR: Absolutely, absolutely, even a father figure. Because we come from small towns. I am from a village, a German colony, from humble, simple, Catholic country families, respectful of authority. Because of this, these Catholic characters who are priests held authority.
So, obviously, when they formed us in the family with a Christian education—authentic, moral, ethical—where were parents going to send their children to continue that family upbringing? What better place than the seminary? And look at what they encountered in the seminary with these people like Ilarraz.
Obviously, they took advantage of those vulnerable boys who arrived, perhaps from parents with a harsh temperament or alcoholic parents. So, they looked, they fixed their gaze on those boys who were the best, the most sensitive, the most vulnerable, the most obedient.
RSN: Right, it is a perverse task of evaluating the victims.
HRR: Exactly, the most obedient.
RSN: And this news that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will take up the case, what do you think?
HRR: Honestly, the news came last week, and because we know that the timing of justice or the timelines of these commissions are indefinite, upon receiving the news I recognized that I didn’t expect them to admit our complaint so quickly. So, it really was a breath of fresh air, especially because it came after the Supreme Court ruling, which opens the door to another venue for us.
That is very important to us, and I have contacted victims from other provinces who even received this news with great emotion because it is hopeful news. Meaning, it is a ray of hope so that once and for all these laws are modified, because we know that with our cause comes respect for the victims’ timeline, because a victim testifies when they can, not when they want to.
That is, we victims speak out when we are capable of breaking through that fear, that guilt. Because, as you said, many victims suffer because they think about authority, they think, “I am going to betray my Church, the one that raised me.”
For many victims, breaking through that is very difficult. Not everyone has that courage. So, this struggle is also for those who do not dare, who cannot, right? Who suffer with this.
Challenging the State
There are people suffering through this reality. Even more so if one went through a process of faith and held onto it. I follow the path where I remain a believer, but there are people who do not. There are people who have walked away, and the Church does not recognize that reality; it does not embrace the victim. Instead, they push away, turning away many faithful from the Catholic Church.
This is a reality that hits hard, that is current, that existed, exists, and if we do not act now, it will continue to exist. That is the problem. So, the fact that the Commission opened the door for us, embraced us, and took our cause to analyze it, look over it, monitor it, and present it before the full bench of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is very important.
It is very important for challenging the power of the Argentine State. And I deem it necessary because it is within the Organization of American States. Meaning, having the OAS human rights body review the way the Argentine Supreme Court ruled with such superficiality is something that makes us glad. And we want to remain calm, be patient, and manage our anxieties, right? Because there is still a road to travel and this requires patience, but constancy—always constancy and staying alert.
RSN: Well, thank you very much, Hernán. Hopefully, the Inter-American Court calls you soon to present evidence from a case file that by now must be huge.
HRR: Yes, yes. There are important testimonies in that case file, from private citizens or individuals, priests, bishops, a cardinal. It is a voluminous file, and let’s hope they take action on the matter and that the resolution is favorable—not for us; what matters are all the victims of Ilarraz, the victims of Paraná, of Entre Ríos, and of Argentina in general, and that it pushes other countries like yours, which also had terribly grave cases in Mexico.
RSN: Right, in Chile last week the same thing happened with Cox Huneeus. It is exactly the same argument the Supreme Court uses in Argentina; the Chilean courts have used it to say, “Well, they are guilty, but we cannot do anything,” right? As if doing that were so simple.
HRR: These crimes cannot be subject to a statute of limitations because the damage lasts a lifetime.
Every single circumstance… I can tell you about a cologne he used to wear; it was called Old Spice.
That is a cologne that will remind me for the rest of my life. It makes me remember because of the circumstance I lived through, do you understand?
And yes, you can live, but you have to carry small sticks of dynamite that are always going to remind you of that circumstance, that wound they left on you during that all-important stage of being human, which is childhood.
Not with children, Rodolfo. Not with children.
RSN: Completely agree. Completely agree, plus nobody seeks out, nobody wants to go to court, but there are circumstances that force one to act.
HRR: Nobody wants to go to court to testify, but there are circumstances where we must do it because it is for the common good of society. That is important. And to have a better, healthier, more just world.
RSN: Right. And that, that is precisely what those pushing these laws against “false reports” in Argentina and other Latin American countries are banking on. They don’t know that one doesn’t want to go to court. Going to court in Mexico, Ecuador, or Argentina isn’t going on vacation; it’s going to waste time.
HRR: Right, you go there and they aren’t going to congratulate you. They are going to demand things from you, they are going to question you. And you, being the complainant, face more demands than the accused, because we have to undergo psychological evaluations, so many things where they parade us all over the courts just to prove our credibility.
I went to testify three times; by the third time they told me, “Hernán, that’s enough. Don’t come back. What you went through is more than clear.”
RSN: Right. Thank you very much, Hernán.
HRR: At your service, Rodolfo. I appreciate your kindness, your courtesy. I always say, the role of the media in spreading these things is incredibly important, and one does it with all the care and tranquility, knowing what transparency means.
I never speculated with this, never.
Post Data
Last week, by the way, gave the Institute of the Incarnate Word yet another chance to prove how misguided has been that religious “order” that a vast majority of the Argentine bishops, Jorge Mario Bergoglio included, unsuccessfully tried to suppress back in the 1990s.
This series went into more detail on the history of the Institute of the Incarnate Word in the piece linked after this paragraph, dealing with one of its boosters in the United States, the now deceased sexual predator Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C.
Just when Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago is trying to do his best to mount a vigorous defense of Pope Leo XIV’s take on migration, he was also forced to acknowledge that yet another member of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, IVE after its Spanish-language acronym, a priest identified as José Molina, saw his licenses as priest suspended because of reports of abuse at the Parish of Saint Francis Assisi, on 813 Roosevelt Road, in Chicago. Cupich’s statement is available here in both English and Spanish.
Just at a time when Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking for excuses to aggressively carry raids in religious buildings in “blue cities” such as Chicago, Buela’s heirs at IVE are more than willing to give Tom Homan and his masked crews an excuse to attack a Chicago neighborhood with a large Latino population.