July 2022
The following month, the Ombudsman creates a Victim Care Unit and the Framework Policy for Protection and action in cases of sexual abuse of minors and adults of the Spanish Conference of Religious (CONFER), which demands that sexual abusers recognize themselves as traitors to the Church in Spain.
September 2022
In September, at the beginning of the new academic year, at the end of the quintessential vacation month in Spain, the Ombudsman announced that he had received 201 reports of alleged cases of abuse.
November 2022
For the remainder of 2022, the bishops approved during their 120th Plenary Assembly in November a draft of the framework protocol in case of abuse and some guidelines for action intended for all dioceses.
December 2022
Already in December, the newspaper El País published its third dossier with 79 testimonies that pointed to 70 priests, religious and lay people linked to the Church. Fifty of these names are mentioned for the first time.
February 2023
In the month of February, the Ombudsman asks the dioceses by letter to provide all available information before March 31. On the other hand, the bishops reject accusations by the Attorney General, Álvaro García, of “lack of collaboration.”
March 2023
In March, one year after its announcement, the presentation of the report commissioned from Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo was expected. However, the delivery was postponed until June, according to explanations offered months later by the EEC.
At the end of the month, Cardinal Omella delivers to the Ombudsman six volumes with data on cases of abuse. This is the first version of what will later be presented as the report to give light.
April 2023
Two weeks later, in April, the president of the EEC regretted that the focus against abuses is only on the Catholic Church in his opening speech to the 121st Plenary Assembly, which approved the Instruction on sexual abuse which would be published in May.
June 2023
The month of June brought the publication of the fourth and so far last report from El País, which on this occasion points to a total of 1,014 cases and 2,104 victims.
In total, the country has delivered to the Spanish bishops and the Vatican “704 testimonies from people who accuse a total of 545 priests, religious and lay people of ecclesiastical institutions and affect 717 victims”, according to the CEE report. To give lightwhose first version was published on the 2nd. It included 927 reports of alleged sexual abuse against minors under 18 years of age or vulnerable people that would have occurred from the mid-40s of the 20th century until 2022.
September 2023
On the other hand, and despite what was expected, there is no public news of the Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo report on these dates. It would not be until the end of September 2023, when representatives of the legal firm appeared before the Permanent Commission of the EEC.
The episcopal spokesperson, Mons. Francisco César García Magán, stated that the lawyers “plan to deliver the final work in two weeks or so” and added: “We the Bishops do not like the delay and the office assures that it is not due to us. , but there is a complexity, a depth to the work.”
In another order of things, on those dates, it is also known that the Prosecutor’s Office is considering accusing bishops who have covered up abuses.
October 2023
Entering the month of October, the bishops set a deadline of 10 days for the law firm to deliver their report, but Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo is quick to reject it outright.
At the end, on the 27th, the Ombudsman publishes his Report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. A necessary response. It is a text of more than 770 pages that contains 373 testimonies referring to 487 victims. That same day, the bishops convene an Extraordinary Plenary Assembly to address the issue of abuse, for three days later.
One of the triggers for this episcopal reaction was undoubtedly the extrapolations that some media made of the results of a survey (conducted with 8,000 people) contained in the document, which indicated that “child sexual abuse committed in a religious setting is a problem.” which has affected 1.13% of adults in Spain.”
This percentage, transferred to the total population, would mean that in Spain there would be more than 400,000 adults who would have been victims of abuse in the religious sphere in a broad sense, which implies that the perpetrators would also be teachers or catechists, among others, in parishes, schools or camps.
On the other hand, the study stated that “the percentage of adults who were victims of abuse committed by a Catholic priest or religious is lower, 0.6%, a figure similar to that found in studies carried out in other countries.” This percentage would be equivalent to about 200,000 adults.
Cardinal Omella was forceful the next day when he rejected these extrapolations through X (formerly Twitter), a position that was endorsed on Monday the 30th at the end of the extraordinary meeting.
November 2023
These criticisms were highlighted again 20 days later, during the opening of the 123rd Ordinary Plenary Assembly. While the bishops were meeting, the newspaper ABC revealed a false case that questions the reliability of the reports from El País and the Ombudsman, which included it as proven.
December 2023
The year 2023 concluded with the sending to the bishops, almost two years after the commission, of the report from the legal firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, which first sent it in digital format on December 16. Four days later, lawyer Javier Cremades met with Cardinal Omella to make the official delivery in physical format. That same day the 20th, the bishops published the report.
Finally, on Thursday the 21st, the EEC published an update of the report to give light incorporating data from the document prepared by Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, which is criticized for being “basically a compilation of similar cases in previous studies, without carrying out an in-depth study of them and makes conceptual errors such as considering the carried out in the dioceses and those of the Dicastery that have their origin in the previous ones.”