The Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal José Cobo, has announced the celebration in the coming months of “a simple act of recognition for victims of abuse” during the closing of the I Jordan International Congress on abuses of power in the Catholic Church.
The cardinal assured that this act “will not be the end of anything, but rather a space for encounter, reparation and testimony that wants to respond to what the victims are telling us.”
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The event will also have a religious and prayer character, in which “recognizing our mistakes, we will express that we want to continue accompanying the victims, putting them at the center of everything, having them as companions on our journey, learning a little more from them every day, to be able to continue advancing in a culture of good treatment and respect inside and outside the Church,” the cardinal expressed.
For Cardinal Cobo, welcoming “the cry of the victims” constitutes a “special duty” for the Church, which “one day did not know how to protect them,” and which has “the very serious responsibility of contributing to their healing. They are part of our flock, even if they don’t want to know anything about it.”
In his speech, the archbishop also called for “reflection and examination of conscience” on this issue. In his opinion, “respect for the pain of survivors drives us to demand that we reflect, investigate and turn around all forms of abuse, including the most subtle forms of misguided exercise of power that delve into the darkness of that abyss that is always the conscience.”
On the other hand, given that there is an asymmetry between abuser and victim, and that when it occurs “in the name of God it multiplies,” Cardinal Cobo has asked for “a serious review of the use of the authority of ministers, leaders and companions” as well as certain “theologies and ecclesiologies that facilitate despotic forms of ministerial exercise.”
Furthermore, he stressed the need for there to be mechanisms for “early warning and detection of deviations of power” through structural actions that show that authority is based on “service and compassion, never on dominance, exclusivity and “taking away the freedom of personal conscience.”
Cardinal Cobo also asked to always count on “the teaching of the victims” and learn from their authority that emanates from suffering, before pointing out that “a Church chained and subjected to a false makeup that does not assume its sinful condition, is a Church that makes redemption impossible.”
The conversion of the perpetrators was also present in the speech of the Cardinal, who recalled that “the Church, holy and sinful herself, cannot renounce the fulfillment of the Lord’s plan: God does not want the death of the sinner, but rather that convert and live.”
Spanish bishops rejected the reparation act proposed by the Government
Last April, the Government of Spain approved an implementation plan for the recommendations made by the Ombudsman about sexual and power abuses committed within the Catholic Church, which also includes the celebration of an act of recognition for the victims.
The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), of which Cardinal Cobo is vice president, rejected this plan, considering that it started “from a condemnatory judgment of the entire Church, carried out without any type of legal guarantee, a public and discriminatory accusation by the State”.
Nicholas de Cardenas
Born in 1980, I am a Spanish husband and father and journalist with more than 20 years of experience in print and digital media, specializing in sociopolitical and religious information. I have worked for more than 10 years in defense of human rights and have accreditations in Journalism and Comprehensive Communication. Since July 2022, I have been a correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN Noticias in Spain, covering international events of the Catholic Church.