Pope Francis has sent one in every of his top sex crimes investigators to Bolivia at a time when the Andean nation is being shaken by an escalating pedophilia scandal involving priests.
Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, a number one member of the church’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, arrived in Bolivia on the identical day as a former Jesuit seminarian landed within the country vowing to disclose more details about alleged cases of abuse.
The Bolivian Episcopal Conference said Bertomeu’s visit will not be directly related to the recent sex abuse allegations but had been planned earlier to research “the progress made in the sector of the culture of prevention” promoted by the Vatican.
Bertomeu arrived in Bolivia from Paraguay, where he had been investigating similar accusations against church officials and in 2018 he led the investigation into abuses committed by priests against minors in Chile.
The meetings in Bolivia “can be conducted in an environment of profound closeness to all those that have been victims of the scourge of abuse within the Church,” the Episcopal Conference said in a press release.
Bertomeu “is an individual of great trust to Pope Francis, who’s answerable for addressing these issues, and he’s coming to supply some guidance on how we are able to handle this issue, hearken to and support the victims,” said Monsignor Giovani Arana, the Episcopal Conference’s secretary.
The visit comes soon after case of Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas became public. According to a personal diary accessed by the Spanish newspaper El País, Pedrajas allegedly abused about 85 minors in Catholic boarding schools in Bolivia within the Seventies and Eighties. He died of cancer in 2009.
The Prosecutor’s Office has initiated an investigation, which stays confidential, and has called on victims to file complaints.
The Jesuit Society in Bolivia has apologized to the victims and pledged to support the investigation while denouncing Pedrajas’ superiors for an alleged cover up. Many of the superiors are not any longer in office or have died.
Pedro Lima, a former Bolivian Jesuit seminarian considered a vital witness, has vowed to cooperate with the investigation. His arrival in Bolivia coincide with Bertomeu’s.
“I’m not only a witness but in addition a victim of abuses of power, sexual abuse, and abuse of conscience by the Jesuit Society in Bolivia,” Lima said upon his arrival within the Bolivian capital of La Paz on Monday to testify before the Prosecutor’s Office.
During a news conference, Lima accused three Jesuits of covering up the alleged abuses.
“Apologies should not enough, these abuses cannot go unpunished. There have to be reparation for the victims, and I’m here to make sure that these painful events never occur again,” said Lima, who declined to supply details concerning the alleged abuses he suffered.
Lima’s assertions were questioned by the lawyer for the Jesuits, Audalia Zurita, who said Lima “held a position of power” to denounce the alleged abuses when in 2006 and 2007 he was a member of the Constituent Assembly that reformed Bolivia’s structure and didn’t achieve this.
Lima left the Jesuit Society, where he was a teacher in schools and boarding houses, in 2001 and turned to politics. In 2012, he left the country claiming “political persecution” by the Movement Toward Socialism party, and sought refuge with the Jesuits in Paraguay, where he worked until recently.
“Of course, I worked with the Jesuits in Paraguay. Having worked with them doesn’t mean that I should remain silent… after I desired to denounce, they said there have been no victims, no evidence,” he said.
Pedrajas’ case has brought other previously unresolved cases to light. Prosecutor Wilfredo Chávez stated that “there are 23 priests implicated in pedophilia within the country,” including one who was sent to pre-trial detention for 3 months last week.
There have been isolated protests in some churches and Catholic schools in Bolivia because the Pedrajas case got here to light.
