Systematic cover-up at very highest levels of the Church in Argentina

Ecclesiastical crimes. La Pampa: trial begins against priest accused of sexual abuse

José Miguel Padilla, a priest and former army chaplain, was denounced in court by a former seminarian. Despite being sheltered and protected by the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the province of San Luis, and in the face of the delays of a complicit judiciary, the priest will finally sit in the dock.

A new trial against a member of the Catholic Church will take place in the town of General Pico, in the province of La Pampa, between the 2nd and 9th of May. The case concerns the priest José Miguel Padilla, founder of the Capuchin Friars' Institute "Fraternity of Bethlehem", who was in charge of the administration of three parishes and a secondary school in La Pampa for almost 20 years.

The priest, a native of the Buenos Aires town of Adrogué, is accused of the crime of sexual abuse aggravated by being a member of a recognised religious group against a young man from Entre Ríos who was a member of the congregation. The oral and public court proceeding will be conducted by Judge María José Gianinetto.

The complaint

In October 2019, Vicente Suárez Wollert, a young man from Entre Ríos who was studying at the Congregation of the Capuchin Friars, denounced through his social networks that he had been sexually abused by Padilla. By November, the complaint had already been filed with the La Pampa courts. A year and a half later, another victim also denounced abuse by Padilla. By then, the priest left La Pampa and took refuge in San Luis, where he continued his priestly work, despite the warnings sent by Vicente to the Bishop of San Luis Gabriel Barba about Padilla's actions.

Barba as well as Raúl Martin, Bishop of La Pampa, and Mario Poli, Cardinal Primate and successor of Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, knew about the events in Padilla's congregation since the first complainant sent them letters telling what happened. They never responded, remaining faithful to a systematic and perverse system of silence and complicity with the sex criminals that the Catholic Church harbours.

The trial and the wait for punishment

"I am a little anxious but not afraid," said Vicente in an interview with La Izquierda Diario about the approaching trial. "These four years of waiting were difficult, with two years of pandemic and many delays, many postponed instances, but also served to accompany many other survivors in their own instances of trial," added the complainant.

However, Suárez Wollert warned against certain "manipulations" of the justice system, referring to the difficulties of certain witnesses proposed by the prosecution to testify virtually. "The situation of some witnesses who I consider crucial to the case, such as members of the Network of Ecclesiastical Abuses, former friars who have testified to different actions on the part of Padilla, is worrying, as their testimony would be at risk because the Justice of La Pampa is not giving them an answer to testify remotely, something contemplated in at least two agreements, one from the Judicial Power of La Pampa and another from the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation". Both agreements regulate, in general terms, the use of video-conferencing when the persons to testify "are domiciled outside the seat of the court and it is not possible or convenient for them to come in person to the seat of the court". Even Vicente, who lives 800 km away, had requested to testify remotely, he will have to travel.

The bishops who were summoned to testify were treated differently, and they will be able to do so remotely, even those who live in Pampean territory, which Vicente, together with the Network of Ecclesiastical Survivors, denounced as a "privilege". We are talking about Raúl Marti and Luis Martin, both in La Pampa; and Héctor Aguer who lives in La Plata, who, like the Cardinal of Buenos Aires Mario Poli, knew about the events in the Padilla congregation because Suarez Wollert sent them letters telling them what had happened.

"I don't know how to describe it, at least it is striking that the bishops are allowed to do so. Personally, I am starting to disbelieve. We are not asking for a privilege, but it is clear that all ecclesiastical power has privileges".

Privilege and protection that translates into the various testimonies that reveal a systematic mechanism of abuse by Padilla throughout his priestly career and were dismissed for the trial, according to what Wollert denounced: "There are young people, who are now adults, with whom I had not had any kind of contact and yet the story is identical or has many similar elements, they suffered or observed alarming situations. That's when I started to set off some alarm bells; how can he not testify, if he helps us to build a profile of an ecclesiastical abuser?".

For Vicente, the cover-up visibly exercised by the Catholic hierarchy has several aspects: "Sometimes there are personal ties, the return of favours, things that some people know about others and it's better that nobody knows about them. The church almost instinctively acts as a corporation, it tries to relativise these allegations, when it suits it, it tries to make some arrangement privately and shows that it is at its disposal; this would not be the case. Neither of the two dioceses issued statements or contacted me, although I went to the Church in 2016 asking for an internal investigation. The few investigations that do reach the Vatican can receive the maximum penalty of removal from the clerical state and confinement in a monastery; they have a system that is not very credible.

To this day, Padilla continues as superior of the Fraternity and maintains contact with the remaining congregations, two in La Pampa and one in Cordoba. He will await trial in San Luis where, at least at the time of the pandemic, he continued to carry out his priestly work, he was alive through social networks, and he maintained contact with children and young people, despite the warnings issued by Vicente himself.

"Someone look at what is happening".

"There is nothing left but to go out and shout to the four winds so that someone looks at what is happening", says Vicente in reference to the systematic abuses that occur in the Catholic Church and that is why he fights to make these crimes visible side by side with other survivors from organisations such as the Network of Survivors of Ecclesiastical Abuse.

As for the judicial process against Padilla, Vicente knows that he is playing against a strong institution: "Because of his age, the influences he has, the health problems he claims (with health problems, one day he took me to his room to put some creams on him and abused me for the first time), and with all the tricks of the defence, it is very likely that he will have the privilege of house arrest or that he will be released until the sentence is final. He is Padilla and I know he can do anything, I think there may be a flight risk, that the church can hide him", however he is confident: "I hope there will be an exemplary sentence, the facts are irrefutable"

Source