Convicted Bishop, friend of the Pope facilitated abuse of seminarian by priest

The complainant of the priest who will be brought to trial was a witness in the case against the former Bishop of Oran for abuse.

Priest, Carlos Fernando Páez to be tried for sexual abuse

The link between priest, Paez and bishop emeritus Zanchetta

The priest was transferred to La Unión after the complaint.

The Public Prosecutor's Office informed that the Court of Guarantees 1 of the Tartagal district has been asked to bring the case against the priest of Tartagal Fernando Páez to trial. The accusation accuses him of being "the author of the crime of simple sexual abuse, doubly aggravated for having been committed by a recognised minister of worship and in charge of education".

The accusation against Father Páez arose almost at the same time as the case of the former Bishop of Orán, Gustavo Zanchetta, sentenced last March to four and a half years in prison for the sexual abuse of two seminarians.

Kevin Matías Montes first denounced the priest Páez and later became a witness in the trial against the bishop emeritus. During his testimony he told of having seen some situations, but also acknowledged having been abused by Zanchetta. "Why didn't you denounce?" he was asked at the hearing. "Because I denounced another priest", he indicated and left an uncomfortable silence in the courtroom. He was referring to the complaint that is now close to going to trial.

Kevin gives his name because he says he is now "calmer"; he went into exile in Cordoba where he says he found peace and began studying psychology. "I came here because of this and because I felt that both he and the Church were closing many doors on me, being here was liberating me and I stopped hiding. People said how could I not stop him if I wasn't a child and I was even more robust than Paez, but now that I've started studying psychology I see myself in a better light. People don't understand that there is not only physical abuse but also mental abuse, the guy got into my head and I don't know if he's still there", he admitted.

Kevin went as far as self-harming, "1, 2, 3, 4", he reviews them and guiltily clarifies that he didn't report it to "harm the Church" but because "I didn't want to be 45 years old, turn on the TV and see that he fucked up another boy's life, that's why I got up the courage and started to get into it. But at one point I felt I was alone, with Zanchetta's case we all got together and it was all of us, but the trial ended and I felt alone", he said.

However, the loneliness he felt in the face of the complaint began to dissipate when some young people joined as witnesses. "One of them was even a minor when Páez abused him, but he didn't want to denounce because of the exposure as in Tartagal everything is known", he indicated. In the same vein, Paez's background is also well known: "He is from Tucuman, he started seminary there and was sent away for homosexual attitudes, and he came knocking on doors until he landed in the Diocese of Oran and Bishop Sueldo gave him the opportunity, he was ordained as a priest with Cargnello and was sent as parish priest of the Cathedral. In 2007 he was denounced by a 14-year-old boy for sexual abuse with carnal access, but it was an internal complaint and Bishop Lugones sent him back to Tucumán, to the Siambón monastery. Then Colombo arrived and there he returned, but with restrictions, he could not hear confessions or go near young people".

The complaint

The complaint is for events that took place between 2015 and 2017, when he was a seminarian at the San Juan XXIII Institute in Oran, where Zanchetta's abuse took place.

Kevin attended the parish La Santa Cruz de Villa Saavedra de Tartagal, where he lived. "There is a regulation that says that there has to be a link between the seminarian and the parish of origin. Before that I had no link with Paez, Zanchetta forced me, otherwise he was going to run me out of the seminary", he said about how the relationship with the priest began.

Kevin, at the time, was 18 years old, today he is 25. "We began to talk, to have spiritual direction, and he started by first uprooting me from my family, from my friends, he said that I was an emotional orphan, he used a psychological scheme which is called the enneagram, and he told me that based on that I was the emotional beggar and that all this was my mother's fault, because he said that my mother was the same and that I imitated those attitudes. She also told me that my dad never gave me affection, that he never hugged me. At the time, Bishop Zanchetta's support had already happened, and they were both claiming that I never received affection from my dad," he recalled.

Although for Kevin there was a difference between the bishop and the priest: "He was smarter than Zanchetta, who had power going to his head, that's why he did things with impunity, while Páez went slowly, looking for a place to grab you," he said.

In 2017, he said, Zanchetta implemented a new method of priestly formation. "He took me out of the seminary and sent me to live with Paez on weekends, he named him as my formator, I saw him everywhere," he said of the closeness they came to have. The complaint notes kisses on the neck, expressions of "I love you" and the high point that Kevin has trouble remembering: "We were in front of the Eucharist and he asked me to show him my genitals". After the complaint, the Bishop of Oran, Luis Scozzina, transferred Paez to La Union.

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