"The Commission takes a personal approach to each victim."

To begin just today by talking about the fact that society is sick may seem a detail of bad taste or a tremendous obviousness. But the fact is that the illnesses of human beings depend more on their freedom than on viruses; and freedom is subject to the frightening force of gravity of selfishness, which usually does not allow the voice that wants to direct us in the opposite direction to be heard (and which is not a force but just that: a voice, a holy voice). The arrival of a new virus gives rise to new and old forms of selfishness, but perhaps it also gives us the opportunity to recover pieces of reality that are usually lost, to put the plants back on solid ground?

In this environment, the Repair Commission continues to attend, albeit by telephone and through Skypeanother kind of horrible pollution. It has only been in operation for two months and is already showing health effects, modest from a certain perspective, but immense if truly understood.

Any good person, even if full of defects and miseries in many ways, feels (and not only feels, but also understands) sexual abuse and especially pederasty as a horror and a crime. If she also considers them within the family, in the places of formation of young people, or as acts of a religious or a cleric (or a nun) violating someone whom he or she subdues at the same time, it is difficult not to feel nauseated. Christianity is following and identifying with the purest and most intense love, with that which most decisively and deeply helps to promote freedom and all that is best in the human being; but under the cloak of this religion - of this way of living, in fact - there are cases - suddenly, in many places, many cases - of the most violent invasion of consciences and violation of bodies. Innocence is destroyed, the meaning of relationships between people is perverted, wounds are inflicted that last much longer than the statute of limitations of the crimes contemplated in the penal codes of any country.

Justice, full reparation

It is first necessary to represent this horror, this monstrous contradiction, so that the eagerness to place the victim (in the singular, not as a mere case of something general for which there will always be an impersonal protocol of treatment) at the center of the efforts of healing and reconstruction does not seem for an instant an inquisitorial taking of sides with respect to the figure, also fully individual, of the abuser. If in the face of so much cover-up and so much silence we do not all fill ourselves first with shame and desire for justice (if not directly with repentance), we will not be truly objective.

It is necessary to look at the Repair Commission with these eyes. Of course, this is how the person whom the Archbishop of Madrid has placed as the person in charge and coordinator of the project sees it and lives it. That is why he did not hesitate to accept the assignment, as soon as he saw the sincerity with which he was asked to do this work and the excellent people who could make up the core of his team. 

Reparation means recognition of the situation, in order to be able to help cure it, that is, to prevent it from being prolonged, renewed and continuing to be silently ill. For this, we must attend in a very concrete and personal way to each victim -if only the perpetrators would also come to heal and we could help them-, and aspire to recovery, to full reparation, even in the ideal extreme case, to reconciliation, to the so-called restorative justice. Through it, the victim rebuilds her bonds with herself and with others and manages to leave behind, if not her scars, then her bleeding wounds; at the same time, the abuser at least does not repeat his violence and, again in the ideal case, rebuilds himself and (re)establishes fair and healthy relationships with others.

Open to the whole society

The Archbishopric of Madrid is at the service of the whole city. Since it is finally inaugurating this commission, and thus helping to put hope in its rightful place of privilege, it does not want to and should not limit itself to attending to those who have been victims of ordained and religious or who have experienced abuse in environments whose security should have been guaranteed by some ecclesiastical institution. And since sexual abuse is often a means of particular violence used by the abuse of power and conscience, all this extension has to be considered in the work of the Repair Commission. We will welcome any victim, any aggrieved person.

Let it be perfectly clear: here there is no shadow of complicity or cover-up with the abuse. It is very understandable that the victim of an ecclesiastic distrusts an ecclesiastic office that offers to assist him; but as regards the coordinator of Repair (and not only him, but the entire team at the head of the commission), will not admit even a shadow of obscure handling of any case.

Support in all senses of the word

The victim will be accompanied in every way he/she needs. They will be offered, above all, empathetic listening, psychological care, canonical and civil legal services, spiritual care. The victim will have recourse to psychologists (or psychiatrists) and jurists who, if necessary, will be entirely outside the structures of the archdiocese. All this should be free of charge (the Porticus Foundation has committed its financial support).

But there is another area of the commission's work that looks to the future: our own training programs, in interaction with those already underway in Madrid. We hope to be able to launch them before the summer, physical miasmas permitting. Those who follow them will get a Seal Repairs that accredits this training. 

On the other hand, in addition to completing and specializing the formation of listeners, it is also very important to strengthen as much as possible the preparation of future ordained members and future religious men and women. Only a careful exercise of affective education, the integration of sex in the celibate life and a proper understanding of ecclesiastical ministries will form an effective barrier against the spread of this infection.

I can assure you that those of us who have begun the task do so with great enthusiasm and genuine hope. Some of us who are only parents, teachers, therapists or lay jurists see that the struggle we have undertaken makes us live much more comfortably than before in Christian communion and universal human brotherhood.

Repara Commission: email: [email protected], tfno. 618 30 36 66.

Diocesan complaints offices by May 31

-text Francisco Otamendi

Only the coronavirus could prevent practically all Spanish dioceses from having an office in place by May 31 to receive reports of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people, as established by the motu proprio of Pope Francis Vos estis lux mundi. 

According to the secretary general and spokesman of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Bishop Luis Argüello, who reported on these offices at the conclusion of the bishops' plenary assembly in early March, the only dioceses that did not comply with the requirement at that date were some in Catalonia, and he announced that they would do so in the coming weeks, because they had preferred to wait for the assembly to be held. 

The dioceses of the ecclesiastical provinces of Pamplona and Tudela, Santiago de Compostela and Valladolid have opted for a metropolitan office for all the circumscribed dioceses, as has the Archbishopric of Castrense in Spain.

On the other hand, those corresponding to the ecclesiastical provinces of Burgos, Granada, Madrid, Mérida-Badajoz, Oviedo, Toledo and Valencia have agreed to organize their own diocesan offices.

The ecclesiastical province of Seville has also set up a metropolitan office for the archdiocese, to which have been added the suffragan offices of Cadiz and Ceuta, and Huelva. The dioceses of Asidonia-Jerez, the Canary Islands, Cordoba and Tenerife have opted to set up their own diocesan offices.

Bishop Argüello reported that although the Pope's norm establishes a minimum to be fulfilled, the reception of complaints, the reality shows that in many cases "These offices are also looking into the possibility of accompanying the victims". And he gave as an example the project Repairof the Archdiocese of Madrid: "Repara, in addition to contemplating the office, offers many, many more possibilities." he pointed out, as seen on this same page in the article by its coordinator, Miguel García-Baró. The secretary general confirmed that the Episcopal Conference will not have its own office, but has committed itself to carry out a service of "communion and liaison" between the various offices and the Tribunal of the Roman Rota if necessary.

CEE and CONFER, walking together

In January, the EEC and the Spanish Confederation of Religious (CONFER), together with Catholic Schools, held a conference on the following topics Abuse of power, conscience and sexual abusein which they carried out "A call for us to walk together. A path of prevention, with the victims, training. We have to put on the table what is already there and from there learn together and help each other".Luis Argüello.

At the opening ceremony, the president of CONFER, Mariña Ríos, expressed the "We want to help each other to do it properly. We are affected not only as this or that institution, but as the Church. And as a Church we have to put the necessary means to face the situations that have arisen, to guarantee and work together".

José María Alvira, secretary general of Catholic Schools, expressed his dismay at the abuses, and stressed the same idea: we must be clear about the universality of this scourge, and collaborate: "We are concerned about abuse in society as a whole. The objective of the Church is to listen to, protect, protect and care for abused minors wherever they are. The Church has to be above controversy. The time has come to work together".