The Archbishopric of Valencia (Spain) announced that it will carry out an investigation into the complaint of five people that they had received “conversion therapies” at a local school.
“Although there is no evidence that practices of this type have been carried out, given this news, the Archbishopric will carry out an investigation into the actions that have been known,” he says in a note published this Monday, July 8.
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The note appears after, last weekend, the Spanish newspaper Levante publish the testimony of five former students of the subsidized school (ed. mixed administration, between public and private, generally religious) Mother Josefa Campos, from the town of Alaquàs, who reported a teacher, before an educational inspection, for giving them “therapy therapies.” sexual conversion for years.”
The newspaper points out that the teacher, identified as FM, gave one of them pills to “cure homosexuality.”
Levante He also states that the teacher treated “350 people in Valencia for 10 years” at the Mater Misericordiae family counseling center (COF).
The Archbishopric of Valencia stated in its note that “in light of the information that appeared in the media, the Archbishopric of Valencia declares that no complaints have been received from people who have been treated at the Family Guidance Center (COF).”
“The Family Guidance Center is not an official organization of the Diocese. It is a public association of faithful, which has its own statutes,” the text highlights.
“Although these types of associations have an advisor, they do not have executive power. His mission is to accompany them spiritually in family pastoral care,” he adds.
“Conversion therapies” are prohibited by law in Valencia. Its application can be punished with fines of up to 120,000 euros and up to disqualification from working in the public administration, for three to five years.
What are “conversion therapies”?
When we commonly speak of “conversion therapies,” it encompasses both a series of psychological and scientific practices as well as religious forms that come, for the most part, from the American Protestant world.
Especially in past decades, in many cases these practices were physically, mentally, and spiritually abusive; but this has not been the case in all cases.
The LGTBQI community (lesbians, gays, transsexuals, bisexuals, queer and intersex) often uses the term “conversion therapies” to denigrate and criminalize any form of help, even psychological, for people with same-sex attractions.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.