Spain’s public prosecutor has ordered regional offices to investigate all ongoing judicial investigations into sexual abuse of minors by the Catholic Church, while parliament has taken the first step to potentially open its own investigation.
The prosecutor gave each region 10 days to compile the information, a prosecutor source told Reuters on Tuesday.
The Spanish Bishops’ Conference did not respond to a request for comment.
The move comes after Spain’s Catholic Church said last month it would set up diocese-level commissions to hear complaints from abuse victims, following a meeting of its senior leaders with the pope in Rome.
denunciations
The Spanish Church has a special page on its website on dealing with abuse cases, where it says that when a complaint is made to the Church, all evidence collected would be sent directly to the Vatican.
It also encourages victims to come forward and present the case at the prosecutor’s office.
The newspaper El Pais in December published the results of a three-year investigation that revealed it had uncovered possible abuses by 251 priests and some lay people from religious institutions against at least 1,237 victims between 1943 and 2018.
Last week, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met with Juan José Omella, president of Spain’s Episcopal Conference, and will meet this week with an alleged abuse victim.
The government said in a statement that the prosecutor, who operates independently, was acting “within the scope of his autonomy and competences”.
“These actions do not replace the measures the government is considering to clarify the facts and prevent new cases,” it said in a statement.
Separately, Spain’s parliament passed a vote on a motion by some small left-wing parties to establish its own investigation into the matter, although such a commission would take time to materialize and would likely face opposition from right-wing parties.
Sexual abuse scandals in the global Catholic Church first made headlines in 2002, when the American newspaper Boston Globe wrote a series of articles exposing clergy abuse of minors and a pervasive culture of concealment within the Church.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of cases have emerged around the world.
Source: CNN Brasil
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