From El País
By Julio Núñez
A Spanish member of the religious order of the Society of Jesus (known as the Jesuits) sexually abused dozens of children in Bolivia. The church covered it up, but when he died, Alfonso Pedrajas left behind a shocking confession. EL PAÍS reconstructed his story, in his own words and those of the victims and people who knew him
During what would be their last trip, in late August 2009, the Spanish Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas, 62, made his boyfriend promise something: “Whatever it takes, you need to get my computer. I don’t want anyone else to have it.” His partner swore that he would, as they drove their gray Toyota down the dusty roads that lead to the Urmiri spa and resort in western Bolivia, where the couple was headed on vacation.
“That was what he told me,” his former boyfriend said 14 years later, speaking with El PAÍS by telephone from Bolivia. “I had no idea what he meant by ‘whatever it takes.’ Did he mean I’d have to convince someone to give it to me? Would I have to steal it? I really had no idea,” says the man — Pedrajas’ partner for the last four years of his life — who was afraid to have his name published for this story.
“But did you know — before you saw what was on that computer — that Alfonso had sexually assaulted dozens of minors, and that the Jesuits covered up the complaints?”
“Yes,” he says, sighing in dismay, “he told me about his concerns, his fears. But he also told me that the church as an institution supported him.”
A few weeks later, on September 5, the priest died of cancer in a hospital in Cochabamba, Bolivia. When his boyfriend arrived for the funeral, a brother who had travelled from Spain had already collected the Jesuit’s belongings: photos, books and a guitar. He gave Alfonso’s partner the ACER computer, because he figured that it was a very personal object.
Back at home, the Jesuit’s boyfriend turned on the computer. He was the only one who knew the password. He browsed through the files and found a document that two years earlier Alfonso had hinted he was writing. The document, called Historia (“Story”), was a kind of memoir: 383 computer-typed pages, filled with reflections, accounts of various episodes in Alfonso’s life, and a few dozen letters. All told, 350 entries with bold-typed headings indicating the place and date where he wrote them. Like a map charting a long and sinuous road, the priest’s diary follows his life from 1960, the year when he entered the Jesuit order as a novice, to 2008, the year he stopped writing after succumbing to exhaustion and illness.
For the first time since EL PAÍS began its sweeping investigation into child sexual abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church in 2018, the newspaper has gained access to a document — Pedrajas’ diary — that recounts abuses and their cover-up from the other side: from the perspective of the perpetrator.
In his diary, the priest admits to abusing dozens of children while he was a teacher in several religious schools in Latin America, most notably during his time as the director of a private boys’ college in Cochabamba. He also recounts how the Jesuit order, including at least seven provincial superiors and a dozen Bolivian and Spanish clergymen, covered up his crimes, along with the complaints of several victims. Pedrajas writes in his diary that he is afraid of being found out and blackmailed. He is ashamed of his crimes, but always refers to them as “sins,” “mistakes,” or an “illness.” He confuses consensual homosexual relations with assaults on minors. He admits to abuses that he never describes in detail, but that his victims, five of whom spoke with EL PAÍS for this story, look back on in horror.
As he read the diary, the priest’s partner saw the confessions right before him, in black and white. Confessions like: “My biggest personal failure: without a doubt, the pederasty.”
Without thinking about the consequences, he sent Pedrajas’ brother a DVD by Courier Express containing dozens of photographs, along with the Jesuit’s memoirs. “I never thought it would end up in the press,” he says. Someone in the family printed the contents of the DVD, kept it in a green ring binder, and put it in a cardboard box. And that is where it stayed, forgotten in an attic in Madrid.
Until one day in December 2021, when Fernando Pedrajas, the priest’s nephew, was cleaning out the attic and came across the secret diary, covered in a thin layer of dust. Fernando glanced at it fleetingly, and took it home to read. “The first pages were beautiful,” he says. “Some were letters to my grandmother, where he told her enthusiastically about how he wanted to become a good priest. But as I read on, I realized the reality: my uncle was a pedophile.” Fernando read in horror his uncle’s estimate of the number of children he abused:
“I hurt so many people (85?). Too many.”
Fernando knew that he was dealing with something much bigger than just an isolated case of child sexual abuse in the church. He decided to report everything he had found to the Society of Jesus in Bolivia. “The victims come first. The most important thing is that they find some kind of justice,” he says.
During the summer of 2022, Fernando maintained a brief email correspondence with the current director of the school in Cochabamba where his uncle committed most of his abuses, but the director refused to take any responsibility. Alfonso’s nephew presented the diary to Spanish prosecutors, who dismissed the case for exceeding the statute of limitations. Finally, Fernando reported his uncle’s abuse to former Jesuit Provincial Superior Osvaldo Chirveches, now in charge of investigating abuses within the religious order. Since he filed the complaint in October, Fernando has yet to receive a response on the status of the church’s investigation. The only communication he has received from Chirveches has been a persistent: “Send us the diary.”
Chirveches insists that the order has only received one complaint, and that the church has opened a preliminary canonical investigation into the matter. He has not said whether or not the order was already aware of these abuses, nor has he questioned the provincial superiors who, according to Pedrajas’ memoirs, helped cover up the crimes. “Since we don’t have the diary, we can’t expand this investigation ex officio,” he argues.
Faced with the possibility that the church would bury the case, Fernando decided to contact the press, and turned Alfonso’s diary over to EL PAÍS, which has conducted its own investigation into the case, studying the priest’s memoirs and uncovering additional photographs and other documents that contextualize his confessional account. EL PAÍS contacted several Jesuit officials who allegedly helped cover up Pedrajas’ crimes, and spoke to five of his victims — various others are mentioned in the diary — who recounted what the priest dared not detail on paper: how he abused them, and the traumatic afterlives of that abuse. The following account is structured around fragments, in loose and non-chronological order, from the diary of Father Alfonso Pedrajas.
This is where the story begins:
A Spanish member of the religious order of the Society of Jesus (known as the Jesuits) sexually abused dozens of children in Bolivia. The church covered it up, but when he died, Alfonso Pedrajas left behind a shocking confession. EL PAÍS reconstructed his story, in his own words and those of the victims and people who knew him
During what would be their last trip, in late August 2009, the Spanish Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas, 62, made his boyfriend promise something: “Whatever it takes, you need to get my computer. I don’t want anyone else to have it.” His partner swore that he would, as they drove their gray Toyota down the dusty roads that lead to the Urmiri spa and resort in western Bolivia, where the couple was headed on vacation.
“That was what he told me,” his former boyfriend said 14 years later, speaking with El PAÍS by telephone from Bolivia. “I had no idea what he meant by ‘whatever it takes.’ Did he mean I’d have to convince someone to give it to me? Would I have to steal it? I really had no idea,” says the man — Pedrajas’ partner for the last four years of his life — who was afraid to have his name published for this story.
“But did you know — before you saw what was on that computer — that Alfonso had sexually assaulted dozens of minors, and that the Jesuits covered up the complaints?”
“Yes,” he says, sighing in dismay, “he told me about his concerns, his fears. But he also told me that the church as an institution supported him.”
A few weeks later, on September 5, the priest died of cancer in a hospital in Cochabamba, Bolivia. When his boyfriend arrived for the funeral, a brother who had travelled from Spain had already collected the Jesuit’s belongings: photos, books and a guitar. He gave Alfonso’s partner the ACER computer, because he figured that it was a very personal object.
Back at home, the Jesuit’s boyfriend turned on the computer. He was the only one who knew the password. He browsed through the files and found a document that two years earlier Alfonso had hinted he was writing. The document, called Historia (“Story”), was a kind of memoir: 383 computer-typed pages, filled with reflections, accounts of various episodes in Alfonso’s life, and a few dozen letters. All told, 350 entries with bold-typed headings indicating the place and date where he wrote them. Like a map charting a long and sinuous road, the priest’s diary follows his life from 1960, the year when he entered the Jesuit order as a novice, to 2008, the year he stopped writing after succumbing to exhaustion and illness.
For the first time since EL PAÍS began its sweeping investigation into child sexual abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church in 2018, the newspaper has gained access to a document — Pedrajas’ diary — that recounts abuses and their cover-up from the other side: from the perspective of the perpetrator.
In his diary, the priest admits to abusing dozens of children while he was a teacher in several religious schools in Latin America, most notably during his time as the director of a private boys’ college in Cochabamba. He also recounts how the Jesuit order, including at least seven provincial superiors and a dozen Bolivian and Spanish clergymen, covered up his crimes, along with the complaints of several victims. Pedrajas writes in his diary that he is afraid of being found out and blackmailed. He is ashamed of his crimes, but always refers to them as “sins,” “mistakes,” or an “illness.” He confuses consensual homosexual relations with assaults on minors. He admits to abuses that he never describes in detail, but that his victims, five of whom spoke with EL PAÍS for this story, look back on in horror.
As he read the diary, the priest’s partner saw the confessions right before him, in black and white. Confessions like: “My biggest personal failure: without a doubt, the pederasty.”
Without thinking about the consequences, he sent Pedrajas’ brother a DVD by Courier Express containing dozens of photographs, along with the Jesuit’s memoirs. “I never thought it would end up in the press,” he says. Someone in the family printed the contents of the DVD, kept it in a green ring binder, and put it in a cardboard box. And that is where it stayed, forgotten in an attic in Madrid.
Until one day in December 2021, when Fernando Pedrajas, the priest’s nephew, was cleaning out the attic and came across the secret diary, covered in a thin layer of dust. Fernando glanced at it fleetingly, and took it home to read. “The first pages were beautiful,” he says. “Some were letters to my grandmother, where he told her enthusiastically about how he wanted to become a good priest. But as I read on, I realized the reality: my uncle was a pedophile.” Fernando read in horror his uncle’s estimate of the number of children he abused:
“I hurt so many people (85?). Too many.”
Fernando knew that he was dealing with something much bigger than just an isolated case of child sexual abuse in the church. He decided to report everything he had found to the Society of Jesus in Bolivia. “The victims come first. The most important thing is that they find some kind of justice,” he says.
During the summer of 2022, Fernando maintained a brief email correspondence with the current director of the school in Cochabamba where his uncle committed most of his abuses, but the director refused to take any responsibility. Alfonso’s nephew presented the diary to Spanish prosecutors, who dismissed the case for exceeding the statute of limitations. Finally, Fernando reported his uncle’s abuse to former Jesuit Provincial Superior Osvaldo Chirveches, now in charge of investigating abuses within the religious order. Since he filed the complaint in October, Fernando has yet to receive a response on the status of the church’s investigation. The only communication he has received from Chirveches has been a persistent: “Send us the diary.”
Chirveches insists that the order has only received one complaint, and that the church has opened a preliminary canonical investigation into the matter. He has not said whether or not the order was already aware of these abuses, nor has he questioned the provincial superiors who, according to Pedrajas’ memoirs, helped cover up the crimes. “Since we don’t have the diary, we can’t expand this investigation ex officio,” he argues.
Faced with the possibility that the church would bury the case, Fernando decided to contact the press, and turned Alfonso’s diary over to EL PAÍS, which has conducted its own investigation into the case, studying the priest’s memoirs and uncovering additional photographs and other documents that contextualize his confessional account. EL PAÍS contacted several Jesuit officials who allegedly helped cover up Pedrajas’ crimes, and spoke to five of his victims — various others are mentioned in the diary — who recounted what the priest dared not detail on paper: how he abused them, and the traumatic afterlives of that abuse. The following account is structured around fragments, in loose and non-chronological order, from the diary of Father Alfonso Pedrajas.
This is where the story begins:
(Scroll down on the linked page to read the whole sickening thing.)
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