94 senior Spanish Church officials accused of covering up child sexual abuse, EL PAÍS list shows

EL PAÍS launched an investigation into child sexual abuse in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has since maintained a database of known cases. In April 2021 the newspaper made public what it described as the first and only database on pederasty in the Spanish Catholic Church, which it says is constantly updated. According to the paper, it has uncovered nearly a thousand cases since 2018, collected in six reports totaling 1,800 pages with more than 800 testimonies. The reports were handed over to the Spanish Episcopal Conference, the Ombudsman and the Vatican between 2021 and 2026.

The Spanish Episcopal Conference has historically denied or downplayed sexual abuse in the Church, according to the EL PAÍS report, which says the conference has claimed Spain was an exception among Catholic countries. In the paper’s first report, 34 cases in Spain were counted from judicial decisions and media publications, and the Church admitted only four of them.

The newest list focuses on senior officials. It names 94 Church leaders accused of covering up child sexual abuse cases, including seven cardinals, 61 bishops and 26 superiors of religious orders. The accusations suggest these prelates prevented abusers from being tried civilly or canonically, and that the facts became publicly known. Bishops reportedly kept alleged abusers in their posts without investigating them, transferred them to another parish after first complaints, or sent them to another country. Such allegations, as presented by the newspaper, have not been described as established findings in the source material.

EL PAÍS states that, by its own calculations, some type of cover-up has occurred in one of every ten known cases so far. The list includes only cases in which the identity of the alleged perpetrator could be determined. Most of the accusations have already appeared in other EL PAÍS reports and are included in its database. The database lists Spanish bishops accused of hiding, silencing or covering up cases of abuse.

The wider database spans a long period. The oldest case it lists is dated 1927, and the most recent is from the current year. The 1960s accumulate the most cases, about a quarter of the total, according to the paper.

The list is organized with bishops first, followed by religious superiors.