"We are all called to know the impact of abuse," pope saysPriestly celibacy and sexual abuse'Tutela Minorum' urges "path of healing" from abusesJosep Miró i Ardèvol is a prominent Spanish politician and intellectual with a long career in the defense of Christian values and the analysis of social issues. He was Minister of Agriculture of the Generalitat de Catalunya and councilor of the Barcelona City Council in three legislatures. In 2002, he founded the association e-Cristians and, in 2004, the news portal Forum Libertas. In 2008 he was appointed member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
His commitment to the promotion of Christian values and his work in researching contemporary social challenges give him an authoritative perspective to address issues such as sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He has just published "Pederasty in the Church and society"The report is an in-depth analysis of the research carried out in Spain.
In your book you argue that the Catholic Church has been made a scapegoat with the issue of pederasty. What makes you think this is so?
- The data, the facts, the reality. When considering the last eighty years, a period that includes the greatest number of cases of abuse committed by persons linked to the Church, including those of lay status, a concentrated "peak" is observed between the decades of the seventies and eighties of the last century. However, even at that peak, abuses attributable to these individuals represent less than 1% of the total, and even less than 1% of the total. 0.5% in this centuryespecially in recent decades.
In 2023, the cases registered by the Church, slightly more than 9,000, are marginal and continue a downward trend, well below any other social sphere, where the numbers have increased significantly. In the last seven years, cases in general society have doubled, while in the Catholic sphere they have been reduced to minimal figures.
It makes no sense to use the Church as a scapegoat or to focus on this serious problem while governments and other state agencies maintain a passive attitude, without decisively addressing the necessary responses.
According to the data you present, most abuse occurs in family and educational settings. Why do you think these cases receive less media and political attention?
- I do not know for sure because these are only hypotheses, but the evidence is in not wanting to address this crime. A year before Congress agreed to focus attention only on people linked to the Church, a proposal by Esquerra Republicana was defeated that called for an investigation of the entire school system, something that did make legal sense - it was not constitutionally discriminatory, as is what has been done with Catholics - and that, moreover, quantitatively addressed an obvious and known problem. This proposal was rejected.
Why was the school system not investigated, but the Church was? The parties and the government should explain. Perhaps then we would know something about the reasons for this inaction, which is also scandalous when compared to the amount of media and political and media attention devoted to sexual abuse against adults, when in fact the group with the highest prevalence of this type of crime is minors between 14 and 17 years of age.
To point out a hypothesis, I believe that there is a certain parallelism with prohibiting or restricting prostitution: there are so many subjects affected that the political class prefers to look the other way to avoid problems.
What role does the media play in public perception of child sexual abuse?
- They are decisive. They and the political parties, the Ombudsman himself are responsible for the marginalization of more than 99% of abuse cases and their unhealthy fixation on less than 1%.
What measures do you consider essential to combat sexual violence against minors effectively and without ideological bias?
- First, obviously, what we unsuccessfully asked the Ombudsman for is still pending: a study on the situation and its dynamics based on the data available from the Ministry of the Interior and statistics on court rulings, as well as a good knowledge derived from them on the scenarios and areas most affected.
On this basis, and with the necessary adaptations, I consider that the most complete and successfully verified global model, which unites prevention, intervention, criminal action and reparation, is the one applied by the Catholic Church. Contrary to information hoaxes, it is the institution that has done the most and the best in this field. The State could learn a lot from it.
Having said the above, I also consider it necessary to underline that, if this society, which lives obsessed with the fulfillment of desire and especially with sexual desire as the only hyper-good, does not radically change this orientation - the essential foundation of the untied society - even with the right measures it will be difficult to find a reasonable solution.
Some might argue that your book minimizes abuses within the Church. How do you respond to these criticisms?
- To say so would be a total inversion of reality. Minimizing, in the sense of downplaying a fact, is precisely what happens in our society with the sexual abuse of minors, which often seems invisible despite the fact that statistics indicate more than 25 cases a day, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. This is minimizing. Reflecting this problem in its true context is the opposite, it is to present the truth.
In your opinion, which countries have handled the fight against abuse best?
- I do not believe that there is a particularly good model of state response, although I consider the German decision to open an investigation into this problem that includes all cases to be a step in the right direction. Western society has a structural problem in this matter, that a film, "The Sound of FreedomThe "The child" exposes with clarity and a good knowledge of the facts. When a society is sexually disturbed, as ours is, children and adolescents are not safe.
In Spain there have been four major investigations into pederasty: El País, Para dar luz, the Ombudsman and Cremades. Regardless of how biased, fair or rigorous these reports have been, do you think the Church would have investigated the matter had it not been for media pressure?
- Yes, to the extent that the Church in Spain, must follow and abide by what the authority of the Holy See establishes, and this has sold by providing very specific measures, which in the book I deal with in some detail. It is not necessary that they break your face to decide to go to the gym, normally it is enough to want to feel good about yourself.
