This Monday and in the midst of silence and after listening to the testimonies of the victims themselves, the Church, at least that of Madrid, has asked for forgiveness for the first time from the people who suffered abuse within the institution.
“At 14 years old I was pushed to go to live together with an Opus Dei club. I had to phone my parents in front of a priest who was watching what I had to say to them in order to get their permission, says Héctor – not his real name – in one of the ten testimonies that have been heard in the porch of the cathedral of the cathedral of La Almudena in Madrid. ”Even then, I was brutally pressured in a planned manner by the people who spoke to me to enter the organization under threat of eternal damnation if I did not do so,” he continued. I agreed crying and terrified and they forced me to hide my entry from my parents.“
The Act of Reparation for the victims brought together hundreds of people next to the statue of John Paul II in the Madrid diocesan temple. There have gathered men and women who were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by priests, religious men and women and pastoral agents, by ecclesiastical institutions, many of them being children. The majority were met with silence and complicit cover-up from the institution that, until very recently, continued to look the other way.
Although something is changing, the voices of the victims had not been heard, at least as until now. They still do not sit on an equal footing at the tables where decisions regarding their future are made. This Monday, a first important step was taken, symbolically. Hopeful, with many cautions, regarding the victims.
“They stole my soul”
“They gave me education and culture, but they stole my soul. Since it happened, more than 40 years ago, I have not been afraid of death, but of life,” recalled a man who was abused at school as a child. “If there are no more complaints, it is not because there have not been abuses, it is because the treatment we are going to receive is more painful than the abuse itself,” added a priest, who was abused in the seminary. Not all voices described their own story to preserve the privacy of the survivors: many of them have not yet been able to confront their abuser.
“You are a victim and, at the same time, you consider yourself an accomplice, and you disgust yourself,” noted one woman, who was abused by her novitiate teacher, while another, also currently religious, expressed the abuse suffered, for ten years, by his confessor.
“It wasn’t just one person who abused me, it was abused by an entire community that allows it,” another victim reported. “The fault that there are ‘bad guys’ in the Church is that there are good ones who do not denounce the bad ones. What harms the Church is not the denunciation, but what happens in it.”
If a crude testimony assured that “the bad guys win when the good guys do nothing,” others called for the Church’s reaction: “Do not be afraid of the victims. Most of us are not looking to mediate our case or see how we can get an economic pinch from the Church. We just need a welcome (…). We have been betrayed by the Church,” noted another man, who was abused, as an adult, during a pilgrimage.
The institution has almost hurt me more than the aggressor. It has taken them 10 years to receive me and believe me. The dilettante, distant, legalistic and cold attitude of some ecclesiastics and concealers has greatly damaged my soul and my relationship with God.
“The institution has almost hurt me more than the aggressor. It has taken them 10 years to receive me and believe me. The dilettante, distant, legalistic and cold attitude of some ecclesiastics and concealers has greatly damaged my soul and my relationship with God,” concluded an adult woman, victim of a priest, before the moment of reflection and request for forgiveness from the cardinal. Cobo and the REPARA project, which invited us to “start paths of listening and healing together.”
Cardinal Cobo spoke a few words in which he did ask for forgiveness and a commitment to support the survivors: “We want to assume the guilt that corresponds to us and walk, together with the entire society, assuming so much pain, without fear and with hope.” Furthermore, the victims who wished to do so entered the cathedral for a penitential act.
The tears and the wounds
“We don’t want to, we can’t, we shouldn’t turn the page.” In the second part, the penitential act itself, Cardinal Cobo admitted that “we know that this is not the time for many words. Surely you are tired and tired of empty words.” “It is the time for facts, for listening, for learning, for recognizing and for repairing,” said the archbishop of Madrid.
“The tears and wounds have opened our eyes to recognize that we have not cared for the victims, that we have not defended you and that we have refused to understand you when you needed it most. “We are deeply sorry,” the cardinal continued. “It is no longer about asking for forgiveness, not only or primarily, but about welcoming, repairing and restoring and including in all its meaning,” he said before the third and final part of the celebration began, with the planting of an olive tree at the doors of the cathedral. The symbolic act requires continuity, with serious, effective measures and in which the victims not only have a voice, but also a vote.
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