Setting up a panel of experts to investigate offenses against children within the Spanish Catholic Churchdemanded on Monday in parliament the Socialist Party of the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
It is noted that the Catholic Church has ruled out conducting a general inquiry into the matter itself.
This committee will be formed “By experts, by representatives of victims’ associations, by the clergy, by the public administration”explained to reporters the chairman of the socialist group in parliament, Hector Gometh, broadcasts APE-MPE.
“We want to deal with it in the strictest way possible. “but also with the greatest empathy and in the fairest possible way an issue that our country can no longer ignore,” said Carmen Calvo, a former second in the left-wing government.
So far, sexual violence against minors by Catholic priests has not been the subject of any significant research in Spain, neither the Church nor the State, unlike what has happened in other countries such as the USA, France, Germany, Ireland or Australia.
In the absence of official data, El Pais newspaper started its own investigation in 2018, recording 1,246 victims from the 1930s. For its part, the Church has recognized only 220 cases since 2001.
The government will contact the Catholic Church “to ask it to cooperate” with the commission, “while in other countries, such as France, the Catholic Church was the one to take the initiative,” Carmen Salvo added.
The creation of the committee should be voted by the Parliament
The creation of this committee of experts will have to be voted on by the parliament, which has already accepted a request for a parliamentary inquiry into the matter made by the radical left-wing party Podemos, a partner of the Socialists in the new ruling coalition, as well as and by two separatist left-wing parties, the ERC Catalans and the EH Bildu Basques.
Hector Gomez today expressed his belief that the socialists will be able to persuade Podemos to support the creation of a committee of experts rather, despite conducting a parliamentary inquiry.
Last week, Pedro Sanchez had publicly expressed his support for a victim of sexual violence within the Church, the Catalan writer Alejandro Palomas, who complained that abused sexually by a priest at the age of eight in a Catholic school in the mid-1970s.
Source: News Beast
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