The State Attorney General’s Office has asked the superior prosecutors of the autonomous communities this Monday for all complaints and complaints about aggression and abuse of minors that have occurred in religious spaces, according to what has been advanced The country and has been able to confirm elDiario.es. The term for these procedures to be sent will be 10 days.
The records of this type of procedure do not specify whether the crime took place within the Catholic Church or elsewhere, so it is necessary to review each case to find out how many of them have occurred in religious institutions. .
This decision has provoked “indignation” within the Episcopal Conference, which was not previously aware of it. Episcopal sources have expressed their surprise to elDiario.es and believe that the investigation has little to do.
Last December 19, the Pope ordered an investigation into the cases of abuse in the Spanish Church after the PRISA group newspaper delivered a report to the pontiff with 251 new cases from 1943 to 2018. After the news, the spokesman for the Episcopal Conference (CEE), Luis Argüello, confirmed to elDiario.es that a note was sent to the diocese and religious congregations in which they offered to the bishops to investigate the cases detailing the dossier if they considered it “necessary”.
The government commission of inquiry
This Tuesday the Table of Congress will decide whether to process the request for a commission on cases of pederasty in the Church registered by United We Can, ERC and EH Bildu. Precisely this Monday it was known that the PSOE will vote in favor of qualifying the proposal, although the party is not convinced of the proposed format or content.
Alternative ways to carry out this study are also being studied, such as promoting a commission with “prestigious” independent experts. However, the initiative of the Prosecutor’s Office does not replace the one that is being promoted in the Congress of Deputies, as confirmed by government sources.
The bishops, on the other hand, denounce that the government commission is a political and media campaign. “That worries us. [….] It seems especially painful to us that the situation of the victims could even be used in the political dispute, in the confrontation proper to Parliament or to Spanish social and political life,” Luis Argüello declared in an interview with the Vatican media.
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