TV3 premiered on Tuesday a new installment of La fugida, the documentary series that collects the investigative work of journalist Guillem Sánchez on sexual abuse committed in religious environments. In 2024 we saw a first season. But each broadcast calls on new victims and, therefore, other aggressors are also denounced. This time, the three new episodes (which you will find on the 3Cat platform) focused on cases linked to the Escolapis and the Escola Pare Manyanet in Barcelona.As always, the victims' stories are devastating, and even more so when the impunity of the abusers and the complicity of the institutions that protect them are flagrant. The Escape. Hidden Truths provokes deep indignation.The investigative work is impeccable: it listens to and protects victims and seeks accredited voices that lend solidity to their account. Perhaps the need to recreate scenes that allude directly to episodes of abuse is what grinds a little. Despite the prudence of these brief fictions, they incorporate a morbid element that makes it inevitable to consider what the objective of the dramatizations is and whether there is a real need to include them. Having to recreate a priest putting a child on his lap might be too much.Guillem Sánchez manages to speak with some of the aggressors. The scene in which he intercepts the religious man Josep Blay leaving a school after the Escolapis have denied their proximity to minors is particularly striking. He also has a conversation with the missionary Manel Sales on a bus. The pretexts of dead musk, the evasions, the lack of memory, and the paternalistic arguments of the aggressors are disgusting. But surely they are only the rudimentary and clumsy version of a rhetoric and cynicism that end up being representative of their religious communities.And here is where we enter the most scandalous part denounced by Guillem Sánchez. Both Jordi Vilà, provincial of the Escolapios, and Borja Aitor Arriaga, spokesperson for Escola Pare Manyanet, are exposed in the documentary. They make a resounding ridicule. When it is said that shame must change sides, it is obvious that it must not only fall on the abusers, but on all those who try to protect them through a discourse full of confusions, imprecisions, and misleading arguments. Both had to rectify statements made in front of the cameras afterwards. Vilà and Arriaga have been discredited as journalistic sources with their pathetic role. The story of the Pare Manyanet IT technician is essential to understanding the strategies of these religious institutions.On the other hand, perhaps we should stop using the ecclesiastical jargon of "father", "brother", and "community" to refer to abusers in documentaries about sexual abuse by the Church, and call them by their first and last names, without euphemisms. Because religious terms symbolically frame these people and institutions in a sphere that seems parallel to that of civil society, even more distant or elevated. And, after all, before justice they are like any of us. Even if they don't think so.

The Vatican may accept the resignation of the Bishop of Cádiz and Ceuta, Rafael Zornoza, after he was implicated in the First case of alleged pedophilia within the hierarchy of the Spanish ChurchOn Monday, the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Luis Argüello, met for the first time with Pope Leo XIV and, after the meeting, confirmed that the Pope is "informed" about the case. The president of the Episcopal Conference also explained that the Vatican could accept the resignation that Zornoza submitted fifteen months ago, upon reaching the age of 75, the retirement age for clergy with a certain level of authority in the Catholic Church. "It is a matter for the Holy See, and we have been told—not by the Holy Father directly—that the resignation could be accepted soon, but we don't know when or how it will be formalized," Argüello clarified. The Archbishop of Valladolid also emphasized that "it is the Holy Father's signature that can accept or reject a resignation and that appoints successors"; therefore, he said, Leo XIV must be fully informed. When asked about the slowness of these types of processes within the Vatican, Argüello defended the practice, stating that "processes in general are almost always slow because they prioritize due process." The Bishop of Cádiz and Ceuta is being investigated by the Holy See following a complaint accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor between 1994 and the early 2000s, when he was serving in Getafe. According to the victim, who sent the complaint by mail to the Vatican this summer, the abuse allegedly lasted for nearly seven years, from the age of 14 to 21. At that time, Zornoza—now 76—was the director of the seminary in the Diocese of Getafe.

The leadership of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) arrived at the Vatican ahead of the 128th Plenary Assembly, the first to be held since Leo XIV became Pope. During the official visit, the Spanish bishops also met with the Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, with whom they discussed the need to strengthen the trust of victims and talked about the development of the ideas competition on the future of the Valley of the FallenParolin had already discussed these issues recently with the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños. Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV reinforced his message of firmness in preventing abuse on Monday. In a statement, the pontiff emphasized that "building communities where the dignity of every person, especially minors and the most vulnerable, is protected and promoted" is a desire very close to his heart. This stance comes after several meetings with abuse victims. On November 8, Leo XIV met for almost three hours with a group of Belgian victims, and on October 20 he received representatives of the Global Board of Victims of Abuse (ECA), which brings together survivors from more than thirty countries who have suffered abuse at the hands of the clergy.

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"I can't cry, I can't express my feelings." This is the testimony of one of the fifteen men, most of them over 70 years old, speaking directly to the camera about the sexual abuse they suffered in the Church as children. Abuse that turned those children into cold, seemingly emotionless people. A woman also recounts the assaults suffered by a nun at a religious center in Navarre. Everyone knew it is Iratxe Pérez's documentary about sexual violence within the Catholic Church. The director's town, Estella-Lizarra, is home to just over 14,000 people, and according to the documentary's author, there is an "estimate of more than a thousand victims" of sexual abuse.

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A Bolivian court sentenced Catalan Jesuits Ramon Alaix and Marcos Recolons, both former provincials of the Society of Jesus, to one year in prison on Tuesday for covering up sexual abuse committed by the late priest Alfonso Pedrajas. Furthermore, sources from the Bolivian Community of Survivors (CBS) assured Efe news agency that this sentence opens the door to four more legal proceedings. According to this organization, which represents victims, there are 12 other Jesuits (also deceased) who allegedly committed sexual abuse against 500 minors in boarding schools, schools, and rural areas of Bolivia, and who allegedly enjoyed the support of the then-high-ranking officials of the religious order in the country.

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The Catholic Church dominates the scene like no one else. It's fascinating how it has appropriated pagan festivals, linked to the natural cycle of life. In the case of the solstices, moments of maximum solar decline, with varying success. While the winter solstice—commemorated in the Roman Saturnalia with great feasts and gifts—has been displaced by the Christian Christmas, the summer solstice is one of the few soirees that has resisted it. Since ancient Persia, fire has been given ritual value and the earth is honored in gratitude for prosperity.

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This June, the Archdiocese of Barcelona began paying the first compensation payments to victims of sexual abuse in the Church. Last year, following the cases reported over the past few years and the reports on abuse in the Church made by the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) and the Ombudsman, the comprehensive reparation plan for minor victims of sexual abuse, known as PRIVA, was implemented. Since its creation, the CEE's Comprehensive Reparation Advisory Commission has reviewed each case of individuals who reported having suffered abuse within the Catholic Church in Spain and are seeking compensation.

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Two young people have reported a leader and monitor of an evangelical religious community in Terrassa, the Samaria Church, for allegedly having sexually assaulted them when they were minors. The complaint that has been made The Newspaper The ARA has had access to the information, which is also directed against another member of the same religious community, who allegedly sexually assaulted them when he was still a minor.

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The Catholic Church will order an "independent audit" to analyse complaints about sexual abuse, the Spanish Episcopal Conference has announced. Law firm Cremades & Calvo Sotelo has been commissioned to carry out the audit, whose aim is to open an "independent channel" to receive complaints and review legal procedures "aimed at punishing criminal practices". In addition, according to the Episcopal Conference's statement , collaboration is offered to the authorities to help clarify the claims and to establish a prevention system "that satisfies social demands in this respect".

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