The reality the Spanish Catholic Church continues to hide: Seven cardinals and 61 bishops implicated in covering up child abusers for decades

EL PAÍS launched an investigation into child sexual abuse by members of the Spanish Church in 2018 and maintains a database updated with all known cases. If you know of a case that has not come to light, you can write to: abusos@elpais.es. If it is a case in Latin America, the email address is: abusosamerica@elpais.es.

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Spain’s Catholic Church refuses to speak about it and continues to bury a central truth: the decades‑long cover‑up of child sexual abuse cases. Even after finally acknowledging the scandal following years of denial, the major taboo that still needs to be broken in order to uncover the full truth is recognizing, investigating, and clarifying the responsibility of those who protected the perpetrators.

An analysis of this cover-up was absent from the only — and failed — internal study conducted by the Spanish Conference of Bishops (CEE), the 2023 report called “Para dar luz” (To shed light), and the Church refuses to provide data on it.

But such evidence exists. An analysis by this newspaper of the 1,622 abuse cases that have come to light so far in Spain — through judicial proceedings, journalistic investigations and canonical sentences — finds that in recent decades 94 senior church officials have covered up complaints, protected clerics or silenced victims. Of those, seven are cardinals, 61 are bishops and 26 are superiors of religious orders.

Ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s arrival in Spain this Saturday for a visit planned to last from June 6 to 12, this situation encapsulates the total passivity in both Spain and the Vatican in the face of the scandal and everything that remains to be done. Moreover, the reality of the cover-ups aligns with another one: the Church’s opacity. This newspaper emailed questions to 211 ecclesiastical institutions — the 70 dioceses and 141 religious orders that already have accusations of child sexual abuse on record. More than a month later, only three have answered all the questions. Eight years after EL PAÍS began its investigation, with a similar round of inquiries that ran into a wall of silence, the situation has not changed.

The analysis of the cases known so far points to 94 senior Church officials accused or suspected of covering up child sexual abuse cases. The list includes seven cardinals (Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, Antonio María Rouco, Narcis Jubany, Ricard Maria Carles, Lluís Martínez i Sistach, Carlos Osoro and Juan José Omella). Some of them, together with other bishops, held positions of power in the CEE: there are four presidents (Casimiro Morcillo, Tarancón, Rouco and Omella), two secretaries general (Juan José Asenjo and José Guerra Campos) and two vice presidents (Carles and Osoro).

The oldest cases point to Rafael Álvarez Lara, bishop of Guadix, accused between 1952 and 1956; Juan Pedro Zarranz y Pueyo, bishop of Plasencia, in 1964; and the case of Félix Romero Menjíbar of Jaén, with an accusation against him dating from 1969.

A bishop who protected a priest after a murder is now being considered for beatification

Two other cases are particularly striking because the accused are in the process of beatification. One is José María García Lahiguera, archbishop of Valencia in the 1970s, implicated in the cover-up of one of the most serious child sexual abuse cases in the Spanish Church, and concealed under the Franco regime: the case of the priest José Prat, who raped and murdered a nine-year-old boy in 1971, stabbing him 47 times, in Puerto de Sagunto. The priest was sentenced to 17 years in prison, which he did not serve, and this archbishop transferred him to Lleida, where he served as vicar. Two other bishops collaborated: Ramón Malla, of Lleida, and Miguel Roca, archbishop of Valencia. The second bishop in the beatification process is Josep Maria Cases, bishop of Segorbe-Castellón, accused of protecting and transferring in 1984 a priest who abused a minor in Artana.

One of the names that stand out on the list is the current archbishop of Barcelona and one of the hosts of Leo XIV’s visit to Spain, Juan José Omella, a former president of the CEE. The Church official was alerted in 2022 about a case of abuse by Jorge Alexander Patiño Morales, a parish priest in Mare de Déu de Montserrat, in the Catalonia region. Omella has admitted to this newspaper that he received the report but did not alert the authorities nor open a canonical process. The priest was later arrested.

In Barcelona there are other suspected cases, and one of the most astonishing ones involves Jordi Senabre, a priest accused of child sexual abuse whom the archdiocese helped to flee justice in 1990, sending him on missionary work and not disclosing his whereabouts — until EL PAÍS found him in Ecuador in 2018. Three bishops of Barcelona knew for all those years where he was, all of them cardinals: Ricard Maria Carles, Lluís Martínez i Sistach and Juan José Omella.

Another well-known name is that of the emeritus cardinal of Madrid, Antonio María Rouco Varela. He is accused of covering up and silencing at least four cases of abuse. One involves a complaint by catechists in 2000. Another one took place in Alcalá de Henares, where a priest was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003, and the victim’s family and the private prosecutor accused Rouco Varela of having ignored the mother’s complaints. He is also under suspicion over the transfer of the priest M. L. Q., who abused a minor in 1975 and was reported to the bishopric in 2006. Rouco Varela is likewise accused of hiding, in the 2000s, a priest accused of abusing minors at the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Madrid for several months, and of transferring him to Peru.

Most of these cases have come to light through investigations by this newspaper over the years. For example, the story of the victims F. J. O. and V. C., who each wrote to the archbishop of Oviedo, Jesús Sanz, to denounce their abusers — two priests who were still active in their Church duties. Sanz met with one of them to explain that he could do nothing, and stood the other one up at the doors of the bishopric. There is documentary evidence of all this, but the diocese denies it.

Both the CEE and the Vatican are aware of these accusations, since they are included in the six reports this newspaper has handed to them since 2021, which together contain 841 testimonies in more than 1,800 pages. However, the cases are not investigating them canonically. Or at least that is the claim that is always made by the bishops’ secretary general, César García Magán, when asked at news conferences: “No bishop is under indictment, neither in civil nor criminal nor canonical proceedings.”

Other cases involve superiors and provincials of religious orders and congregations. One of the best known case is that of the Abbey of Montserrat, which the Pope will visit next Wednesday, and where three of its abbots covered up complaints of child sexual abuse by several clerics from 1968 to 2019. Everything came to light after a victim, Miguel Hurtado, told EL PAÍS about the abuse he had suffered and how the order attempted to buy his silence. The Abbey later admitted the cover-up.

From the Society of Jesus (also known as the Jesuits), the list of the accused includes 10 Spanish provincials (three of them holding senior posts in Bolivia) as well as the former superior general of the order, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach. This congregation accumulates the most cases recorded in Spain: 188 accused individuals and at least 523 victims. On many occasions, several superiors collaborated to protect the abusers by relocating them to another city or country.

One example is the case of Luis Tó, convicted in 1992 for abusing a girl at a Jesuit school in Barcelona. To cover up the scandal, the Catalan provincial Jesús Renau wrote to his fellow countryman Luis Palomera, who was serving as a provincial in Bolivia, asking him to take in Tó. All this was done with Kolvenbach’s consent. EL PAÍS accessed internal documents because Bolivian police seized some of the files in 2023 as part of an investigation sparked by another probe by this newspaper: the diary of the Spanish Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas, who admitted to abusing at least 85 children and recounted how his superiors (in both Bolivia and Spain) protected him.

Those documents contained letter exchanges detailing how the Society of Jesus in Spain transferred Tó, and how confidential letters from Rome were sent to all countries outlining how to proceed with complaints: cover up the case and transfer the accused elsewhere. This method was repeated by most congregations and dioceses. On some occasions, bishops and provincials participated in these transfers. A notable case is that of the Jesuit and well-known writer José Luis Martín Vigil, covered up by the Society of Jesus and later by the well-known cardinal and CEE president Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, an icon of the Spanish Transition, when he was archbishop of Oviedo.

Tarancón’s tenure as archbishop of Madrid is also under suspicion in the case of Cesáreo Gabaráin, the celebrated priest who composed Mass songs such as Pescador de hombres (Fisher of men) and Juntos como hermanos (Together like brothers). Gabaráin was accused of abuse by students at the Marist school in Chamberí, Madrid, where he served as chaplain, and was expelled from the school at the end of 1978. However, two months later he was named a Prelate of Honour by Pope John Paul II, transferred to another Madrid school, San Fernando, and assigned to a parish in the Mirasierra neighbourhood, where he served as vicar until his death in 1991.

One in 10 cases was covered up

These are only the cases in which the name of the person responsible could be identified. In total, this newspaper has found that the Church (senior officials, school directors, seminary rectors, religious superiors and so on) covered up, protected or silenced internal complaints against 159 abusers. That means that, based on the available data, one in 10 cases was covered up.

A clear example is Brother Marino González, a Marist who, over 62 years, worked in at least seven schools across Spain where he abused at least 17 identified children, although victims say the number could be in the “hundreds.” His first complaint dates from 1959 and the latest, filed at a police station, was in 2021. He was moved from school to school for decades. The congregation recognizes only seven victims and refuses to provide information about it.

Opacity has not only been a constant in the Church’s handling of the scandal, it has worsened in recent years. EL PAÍS began its investigation into child sexual abuse in the Spanish Church in 2018 by sending a battery of questions to the 70 dioceses. At that time it confirmed the wall of silence about the scandal: only 18 responded, and only nine provided any details. Five said they had no record of any case at all, and four (Oviedo, Plasencia, Guadix and Vic) admitted to at least one case.

Eight years on, and following the failure of the CEE-commissioned internal study “Para dar luz” in 2023, the situation has deteriorated. This newspaper has asked not only all Spanish dioceses but also 141 Spanish religious orders what the outcome has been of the canonical investigations into the testimonies submitted by EL PAÍS over the years, the total number of cases they have on record, how many complaints they have received in the past year and how many compensations they have paid so far. The response has been silence: only one diocese (Ávila) and two religious orders (the Daughters of Charity and the Legionaries of Christ) answered all the questions.

This newspaper sent the email more than a month ago to 211 entities (dioceses, orders and religious congregations) in which cases are recorded. Of all of them, only 42 replied to the email (17 dioceses and 25 orders), but most refused to provide information. Only three answered all the questions posed and only nine did so partially.

“There have been no cases on this matter”

Other entities not only failed to reply but contradicted themselves. This is the case of the Diocese of Jaca, which states: “In this diocese there have been no cases and there continue to be none on this matter.” The truth is that it is involved in at least two cases, one exposed by this newspaper in 2022, dating back to 1959 and included in its second report, and another recorded in the Ombudsman’s report published in 2023, about which little more is known.

The bishop heading that diocese is Pedro Aguado. Before taking up this post he was superior of the Piarists and is accused of covering up, for nine years from 2010, the sexual abuse committed by a fellow Piarist, José Miguel Flores Martínez, in Mexico City.

Another diocese that contradicts itself is Oviedo, which says it cannot investigate because it has not had access to the data of the people who contacted EL PAÍS to tell their stories. The truth is that one of them called the diocese thanks to this newspaper’s intervention and reported the case canonically.

There are orders (Jesuits) and dioceses (Bilbao and Madrid) that did not respond to EL PAÍS’s queries but periodically publish reports detailing the complaints they have received.

The 30 or so orders and dioceses that did respond to EL PAÍS denied the information with a very similar message that pointed to the Spanish Episcopal Conference as responsible for handling the cases: “The information you requested in relation to the testimonies is sent to the CEE’s Child Protection Service, to whom we have entrusted the annual reporting of the Office’s work.” The CEE has never provided information about the scandal.

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