Habitual pedophiles: a nice report on the abuse of 'Father Pica'

While trying to marry his son to the Pope’s daughter, Lorenzo the Magnificent – a great expert on the interior of the Papal State – described the Vatican as a “den of all vices”. Simoniac popes, voracious lovers of power, twelve-year-old cardinals, bastard children… this is the Rome in which the Society of Jesus was born, explains Jean Lacouture in his extensive research Jesuits (Paidós, 1993). Born in 1540, the religious order claimed to be, at the time of Luther’s reform, the Pope’s army, to which its members were and are subject with a special and military vow of obedience. The Jesuits have been an intellectual reference for centuries, capable of being indignant with Diderot and d’Alembert for not having been consulted to draw up the Encyclopedia. With brilliant exponents, accused of conspirators and always intelligent, over the centuries they have ended up aping and adopting the tics of the sordid ecclesial system.

The appearances have exploded with the cases of pedophilia that have emerged in recent years. EL PAÍS was the standard bearer of this investigative task from which the Society of Jesus did not shy away. Julio Núñez Montaña, journalist who, together with Íñigo Domínguez, conducted the investigation on this newspaper, has just published Father Pica. Cartography of an abuser in the Church.

The book basically traces the story of Father Alfonso Pedrajas, known in Bolivia as Father Picaa sexual predator who abused more than 80 children, essentially in the Juan XXIII school in Cochabamba, which he ran. Pica She recorded her gruesome abuse and internal torture in a diary.

Julio Núñez gained access to the story after the death of the pedophile Jesuit and thanks to one of his grandchildren. And he transferred it – after having dedicated extensive information to it in EL PAÍS – in the book in question. Núñez’s story is exhaustive, documented and detailed, a true reference in these times in which some claim the divorce between journalism and truth. He is an exponent of the professional obsession with rigor. Picain Núñez’s story, he transports us to the hell experienced by his victims, the college students, many of whom come from very humble families, in whose beds the pedophile prowled at dawn using his authority.

Pedrajas manifests himself as a man with progressive social sensitivity – an admirer of Latin American fighters, like Che – who brings with him that pathology of which the ecclesiastical hierarchy decided to become aware only when the imperfect society of men intervened in the matter.

Until this happened, the ecclesiastical hierarchy had limited itself to hiding the crimes. They changed the attacker’s destination, disdained complaints from victims, and were not shy about lying to prevent cases from occurring.

In case of Picaup to four former provincials of the Society of Jesus were investigated by justice as accomplices, explains the author. They were always aware of everything and hid it to save the institution, not the children. Particularly illustrative is a letter that the Jesuit general – Peter Hans Kolvenbach – sent in 1998 to all the provincials: “If this is an isolated case and the scandal is avoidable, the possibility of a transfer to another place can be considered (…), states Julio Núñez in his book.

Dei non hominum est episcopos iudicare (judging bishops is up to God, not to men), we read in an epigraph of Raphael’s stays in the Vatican. Better is the coming judgment of God than the imperfect justice of men.