Spain: The Healthy Reaction of Cardinal López Romero

The article comments on a decision of Pedro Sanchez, the current Spanish prime minister, who announced “a strengthening of legal framework so that civil responsibility for the sexual abuse of minors could not be prescribed, as well as the creation of State funds for the payment of aid and damages for victims of abuse in the Church.”

The cardinal underlines the exceptional rarity of such a decision. Especially as, in the course of the debates, Sanchez declared that the Church must commit to repairing all wrongs, even the prescribed cases—which, recognizing that, and without wanting at all to clear the responsibility of the abusers, goes against the law itself.

A Strange and Generalized Discrimination

But what is strangest is the discrimination that such a measure entails. Cardinal Romero asks a simple question: “Why would these funds be used to compensate only the victims of abuse in the Church? Why would the victims of mistreatment committed in establishments of public education, under the jurisdiction of the ministry of education [...] be put to the side?”

The cardinal then lists the mistreatments in “health establishments, [...] sports centers, gyms, [...] associations and movements of all kinds, [...] and also ministries.”

No Victim Must Be Excluded

Finally, the Archbishop of Rabat drives the point home further: “it turns out that, according to an institution recognized in this domain—the Vicki Bernadet Foundation—80% of abuse cases concerning children occur within the family circle. Will they be left without compensation and judgment, these 80% of child abuse victims?”

The cardinal closes with a request for Pedro Sanchez: should there be a creation of funds, no abuse victim should be forgotten; abuse is abuse, no matter the environment in which it occurred—“Lest the funds help only a small number of victims [of abuse within with Church] and the grand majority [more than 95%] be excluded.”

Cardinal Romero’s text does not seek to excuse abusers within the Church, nor to refuse compensation, but he has the great merit of recalling that it is only the tip of an iceberg which remains unexplored—without forgetting that, even within the Church, those who have committed these monstrous crimes remain a very small minority.

We must hope that the head of the Spanish government will have heard the message and that he will reflect a little more before embarking on his project.