Former Jesuit claims he was expelled from the order for denouncing sexual abuse cases

The exposure of the abuses perpetrated by the Spanish Jesuit in Bolivia, Alfonso Pedrajas, continues to raise eyebrows.

Former priest Pedro Lima has told the newspaper El País that two other Spanish priests, Luis Tó and Antonio Gausset Capdevilla, sexually abused dozens of minors and novices of the Order. According to Pedro Lima, after denouncing these acts to the Jesuit provincial, the Spaniard Ramón Alaix, he was expelled from the order.

He claims that in 2001, he reported the abuses to Alaix, who according to Lima knew about the abuse of minors, and received a letter in response, officially stating that he had left the congregation: 'You have not left of your own free will, you would have preferred to remain in the Society of Jesus and you have reiterated this to me. However, we have found it convenient for you to leave us'.

According to El País, Lima was encouraged to make this situation public because of the pederasty scandal unleashed by the story of the Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas, who in a secret diary details the abuse he committed against dozens of minors in Bolivia.

The former Jesuit Lima claims that not only did the Society systematically cover up all the cases of abuse that came to light, but that those who denounced the facts were punished and silenced.

The Spanish newspaper reports that Lima was a Jesuit between 1992-2001 and that he was a novice and teacher in Oruro, Cochabamba and Sucre, as well as indicating that he was a witness to the abuses of Pica (Pedrajas) and Luis Tó, a Jesuit that the order transferred to Bolivia in 1992 for a pederasty conviction in Spain, but also accuses Antonio Gausset Capdevilla, alias Tuco, a priest who developed his ecclesiastical career in Bolivia, of the same crimes.

The former Jesuit says that at the end of the 1990s he was assigned as a teacher in Sucre where he made friends with a young Jesuit, who allegedly told him that Pica had abused him.

"I wanted to ask more questions and his reply was: 'don't talk to me about it any more, please', This victim committed suicide this year. I can't imagine how much he must have suffered. According to Lima, Pica also allegedly abused not only minors, 'but also novices of about 18 or 19 years of age, but vulnerable people'.

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