Apology from the Catholic Church for ‘child sexual abuse’

The Catholic Church of Spain has announced that it “has sincerely and humbly asked for forgiveness” for cases of child sexual abuse in its institutions.

The president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), the highest institution of the Catholic Church in Spain, and Barcelona Cardinal Juan José Omella, in his opening speech at the plenary meetings held in Madrid, stated that as a Church, “to recognize the sin” of sexual abuse against children in the past.

“We sincerely and humbly apologize to the victims.” The Cardinal of Barcelona said: “We ask for forgiveness for this great sin and we will continue to ask for it. But asking for forgiveness is not enough, we want this scourge to be erased from our society. For this reason, we continue to collaborate with the judges, the prosecutor’s office and the ombudsman’s office, to provide all the information we have and implement our protocols. “We want this scar to completely disappear from our society,” he said.

Omella, who condemned the fact that this fact that affects many sectors of society is not brought to light, and advocated leading the search for a solution that includes all of society in the face of this social problem, continued:

“The Church wants to lead the fight against this scourge that affects one in five children in Europe. Without shying away from any of our own responsibilities, we regret that this painful problem is not currently being addressed on a global scale. We insist on analyzing this drama within the ambit of the Church”.

In the report presented to the Ombudsman institution at the end of March and shared with the public, the EEC announced that it was aware of 706 complaints of sexual abuse against children in institutions of the Spanish Catholic Church since 1945. It was indicated that 186 of the 706 cases in the report were in the recent period. (AA)