Columbian court rules that the Church must open her archives on 1000s of priests accused of abuse

Last May, Colombia's Constitutional Court ruled in favor of two journalists who have been investigating clergy sexual abuse in Colombia for seven years and demanded that the Church declassify archives on thousands of priests who committed abuse. The journalists received favorable responses from church authorities for only 600 names, out of less than one-seventh of their requests.

Pope Francis in Columbia.  Awful Cross.

"Christianity about values, not 'cold attachment to norms'"

If Francis had been more attached to norms, the Church would be in a much better place today

Many victims have faced a wall of silence from the dioceses concerned for years, while the priests who are still alive and responsible for the abuse are, with rare exceptions, still in office. The statute of limitations for child abuse was adopted in Colombia in 2021 but is not retroactive, which blocks civil justice investigations.

As El Pais explains, "the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of two journalists who filed dozens of petitions for protection against several dioceses and religious communities across the country, requesting the full publication of files containing allegations of child sexual abuse. According to them, the Church provided them with only 13% of the requested data, which allowed them to reveal the names of more than 600 priests accused of pedophilia over the past two years.

"We are very happy. This decision guarantees a complete response to the 137 petitions we sent," said Juan Pablo Barrientos, one of the most active journalists investigating cases of pedophilia within the country's Church, in a telephone interview. Along with Miguel Ángel Estupiñán, he uncovered hundreds of accusations of pedophilia against dozens of priests. "If, with a fraction of the information, we were to reveal more than 600, with the remaining 87%, we could reach up to 5,000 denounced priests," predicts the journalist.

The court also ordered the Attorney General's Office on Monday to provide the data requested by another journalist, Andrea Díaz Cardona. The BBC journalist had requested information in January 2024 regarding allegations of sexual crimes against senior officials of the Catholic Church. Since the prosecutor's office did not fully respond to her request, the journalist initiated legal proceedings, which have now concluded. The judges gave the agency 48 hours to respond to questions regarding the 86 criminal cases under investigation for crimes committed between 1992 and 2021."

Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go for the bishops in Colombia to become aware of the situation – as in other Latin American countries also shaken by repeated abuse scandals (Argentina, Chile, abuse among the Jesuits in Bolivia). They, along with a Jesuit priest, opposed the decision of the Constitutional Court and affirmed that it judged that "all the priests of the Catholic Church were guilty a priori." The Constitutional Court of Colombia has not yet given a deadline for the Catholic Church in Colombia to open its archives, but this decision shows that if the Church fails in its duties in the fight against abuse and in transparency, others will take over – civil society, the highest legal authorities or the State.

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