Pope Francis dispatched Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, a high Vatican intercourse crime investigator, to Bolivia on Monday as victims of alleged sexual abuse by the hands of clergymen proceed to return ahead.
Bertomeu, a number one member of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Religion (DDF), beforehand led investigations of abuses dedicated by clergymen towards minors in Paraguay and Chile. The Bolivian Episcopal Convention acknowledged that Bertomeu’s go to had been scheduled previous to the rising accusations. In line with the convention, Bertomeu was scheduled to check the progress made within the area of the tradition of prevention promoted by the Vatican.
The escalating scandal started when Spanish newspaper El País recovered and publicized the diary of Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas, during which he admitted to sexually abusing roughly 85 minors whereas working at Catholic boarding faculties in Bolivia via the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties. The diary additionally detailed how a number of Church officers lined up Pedrajas’ abuse throughout and after his tenure in Bolivia. The quilt up led to the Society of Jesus in Bolivia sanctioning eight, as-yet unnamed, former high-ranking officers of the order. Pedrajas died of most cancers in 2009.
Since then, a number of different Catholic clergymen in Bolivia have been accused of sexually assaulting minors. One, Carmelite priest Milton Murillo, was arrested earlier this month. Bolivian newspaper Pagina Siete reported that, after Church officers had been made conscious of abuse allegations in 2014, Murillo was punished with a switch to Rome, however was later reinstated as a pastor in Bolivia. As with Pedrajas, Murillo’s superiors had been allegedly conscious of his transgressions, however didn’t take any significant motion.
Bertomeu’s arrival coincides with that of Pedro Lima, a former Bolivian Jesuit seminarian who will testify earlier than the Bolivian prosecutors as a witness. Lima describes himself as “a sufferer of abuses of energy, sexual abuse, and abuse of conscience by the Jesuit Society in Bolivia.” Bolivian prosecutors have called on victims of Pedrajas and others to return ahead with their testimony, and the Bolivian Authorities has said it is going to set up a Reality Fee to analyze abuses of minors.
Source / Picture: jurist.org
