VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Infovaticana [Madrid, España]
August 29, 2026
By Miguel Escrivá
While Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime today walks the Vatican corridors vested with the authority of Pro-Prefect of the Dicasterio for Consecrated Life and newly appointed judge of the Court of Cassation, Pedro Mario Ayala —a surviving victim of the sexual abuse committed by a priest against him when he was a minor within the Salesians— suffers the aftermath of a trauma that has led him to psychiatric hospitalization. A recent investigative article by InfoVaticana has revealed the details surrounding this unfortunate case.
The painful aspect of this story is that Artime —as superior of the Salesians— ended up protecting and shielding the perpetrator with a cloak of bureaucratic impunity, while abandoning the victim to his fate, producing a terrible paradox: the current person in charge of overseeing, accompanying, and supervising all Catholic religious life in the world —let us not forget that, despite being subject to Sor Simona Brambilla as pro-prefect, his role is theologically and canonically indispensable in matters relating to the sacrament of holy orders— is the same person responsible for managing a case of sexual abuse marked by opacity, legal reductionism, and the most absolute negligence.
The progressively disastrous handling of an abuse case
In 2015, Artime assured the victim Ayala: «I cannot be complicit in this.» However, the facts indicate that his complicity was hidden behind flagrant bureaucratic negligence. For Cardinal Artime, the rape of a minor within the Salesians was simply a «violation of the sixth commandment.»
Today, thanks to documented revelations, we know that the entire defense structure built to protect the perpetrator is not only ethically unsustainable but also legally invalid. Artime took refuge in the claim that Ayala was over 16 years old at the time of the abuse, supposedly between 1994 and 1996. However, the victim has publicly denounced that the systematic abuse and inappropriate touching actually began in the 1993-1994 cycle, when he had just turned 15.
Under the legislation of the nineties, which the Cardinal invokes as the basis for his inaction, abuse of a minor under 16 did constitute a reserved offense and required direct intervention from Rome. By deliberately ignoring the start of the aggression in order to keep the case at the provincial level, the Salesians openly violated the Circular Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 2011, which ordered them to refer to the Vatican any credible case of abuse against minors under 18, reserving only to the Holy See the authority to judge the statute of limitations.
To make matters worse, the shadow of institutional lies looms over the process: while Artime today declares in writing that the file was never sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because «it was not within his competence,» his superiors verbally lied to the victim, assuring him that the file had indeed been sent to Rome but had supposedly been returned. Someone in the chain of command falsified the truth to bury justice.
But the greatest scandal is evident in the imposition of a supposed sanction applied only on paper and never actually enforced, which in practice ended up allowing the total impunity of the aggressor. Far from being removed from ministerial functions, after formally admitting his guilt in the 2019 decree, the confessed perpetrator —Jaime Reyes— was appointed, just six months later, as director of a youth center in Tijuana.
And when press pressure forced his removal, the congregation simply relocated him as deputy director of another youth center. With these decisions, the directives of the Holy See that explicitly require «excluding the readmission of a cleric if it poses a danger to minors» were trampled with total impunity.
For his part, the provincial who conducted such a lamentable investigation, who signed the 2019 decree and under whose immediate mandate the aggressor was appointed as director in Tijuana, was Hugo Orozco. In a moderately healthy judicial system, Orozco would have at least been investigated and eventually sanctioned under the rigorous standards of Vos estis lux mundi for putting dozens of children at risk.
In Artime’s Salesian kingdom, however, Orozco was rewarded: in 2020, the Rector Major himself promoted him by incorporating him into his General Council in Rome, the worldwide governing body of the congregation. And while the confessed wolf was given a new flock and the accomplice was promoted, Cardinal Artime washes his hands of InfoVaticana’s questions, claiming that it was impossible for him to supervise the immensity of a congregation of 16,000 members.
The serious procedural and ethical irregularities that taint the handling of this case allowed the Salesian congregation to act as judge and jury in a process that from its origin did not have justice or the victim as its priority, but rather to hide, cover up, and minimize the facts.
In fact, while the perpetrator was being rehabilitated and institutionally rewarded, the victim has been punished with the systematic denial of access to his file, shielded behind a supposed «confidentiality» that excludes him from his own legal tragedy. This opacity not only contravenes modern standards of justice, but constitutes cruel revictimization that treats Ayala as a stranger to the truth he himself had the courage to denounce.
Justified questions for the Pro-Prefect of Religious
It is impossible to ignore the immense contradiction these facts represent in a Church that claims to speak credibly of «zero tolerance» regarding sexual abuse. How does Artime intend to exercise disciplinary authority over other religious entities when his own record in the «Ayala Case» is an anthology of how not to handle clerical sexual abuse?
Even more delicate: are there other «Ayala cases» in the cardinal’s service record within the Salesians? The facts indicate that this could be the case. The conviction issued in July of this year by the Seventh Civil Court of Santiago de Chile against the Salesians of that country, characterizing «a systematic and institutional pattern» of covering up sexual abuse, refers to a period prior to his rectorship.
However, what concrete, enforceable, and transparent measures did then-Rector Major Ángel Fernández Artime take to combat and end those situations? What has been the real result? Ultimately, Father Ángel Fernández Artime’s decade of governance in the Salesians of Don Bosco cries out for a thorough, serious, objective, and independent investigation.
Furthermore, the now-cardinal exercises oversight and disciplinary functions over religious institutions that might carry comparable questions to those raised by his own actions, which generates a question: with what authority does the Vatican intend to correct others through the hand of someone who, having knowledge of a case of this gravity —and with absolute authority to intervene— could not even guarantee the effective compliance with the mildest measures adopted in his own house against an abuser?
And the question for the Dicasterio for Consecrated Life is: if that situation had occurred within one of the entities they currently have the duty to oversee, what rating would they give to the procedure of their own pro-prefect? As long as these questions do not have a satisfactory answer, his moral authority to judge and discipline others will inevitably remain compromised.
For victims still awaiting truth, justice, and reparation, this reality sends a deeply discouraging and incoherent message: that within the current Vatican structure, the protection of institutional interests and colleagues —even when they have committed crimes— is prioritized over transparency and justice.
Thus, there is growing fear that the much-proclaimed policies against abuse are nothing more than a cosmetic exercise for public opinion, while the law is applied rigorously only to those who do not belong to their own circle of power.
A judge must be a bulwark of justice, and whoever exercises disciplinary authority can only demand from others what they were willing to demand of themselves. When their decisions serve to minimize the gravity of the facts, dilute responsibilities, or turn a sanction into a mere formality without real consequences, the law ceases to fulfill its protective function and is degraded into an instrument of arbitrariness.