The Catholic Church of Bolivia requests an investigation into the case of the diary of a pedophile priest

An important and very symbolic denunciation for the Bolivian people. This Wednesday, the lawyer for the Compañía de Jesús de Bolivia (the Bolivian Jesuit order), Audalia Zurita, confirmed that the complaint was made to the Special Force to Combat Violence so that the complaints against Alfonso Pedrajas for sexual abuse could be investigated. This is part of the “commitment made to the population and government authorities” to carry out this investigation.

These statements come a few days after the publication by the newspaper ‘El País’ of an investigation with testimonies from victims and relatives about a personal diary of Pedrajas, in which he talks about his priestly life in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. In his texts, he recounts the abuses of dozens of Bolivian children and adolescents that he committed.

The Society of Jesus, which had already been informed of the case but did not go ahead with it, now asks for “pardon” for everything that happened.

“The Society of Jesus of Bolivia repudiates and condemns these publicly denounced acts of pedophilia (…) The Society of Jesus of Bolivia wants to underline its policy of zero tolerance towards abuse, as Pope Francis himself has claimed several times in this regard. (… ) We apologize for the pain caused,” the religious organization wrote in a statement released Tuesday.

“In a preventive way, the living provincials have been suspended in the management of Father Pedrajas and after his death, so the public will not have any susceptibility to any interference from the Society of Jesus,” said the lawyer.

The suspended Jesuits will have to abandon “their places of work”, the “functions they were fulfilling and pastoral activities,” he said.

Memoirs of a pedophile

In 2022, ‘El País’ was contacted by Fernando Pedrajas, a nephew of the Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas, who had access to the diary several years after his uncle’s death. After having denounced the case to the ecclesiastical authorities of Bolivia and fearing that it would go unanswered, he decided to send the text to the newspaper.

The memories, which have 383 pages, were dissected by a team from ‘El País’, who decided to bring to light the passages referring to pedophilia. That medium contacted several of the survivors of this sexual violence and found photographs from the time to support the text.

What is particular about this text is that it was written by the aggressor himself, who openly refers to the abuses he committed, but without describing them in detail. He expresses his guilt and tells how he tried to get help, but at the same time he blames the Church and the “illness”.

A Spanish priest working in schools in South America

Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno was born on June 10, 1943 in Valencia, into an extremely religious family. Quickly, he decided to become a missionary and went to Latin America.

Pedrajas Moreno worked in schools in Peru and Ecuador between 1961 and 1971, before moving to Bolivia, where he was deputy director and later director of the Colegio Juan XXIII – a boarding school – in the city of Cochabamba. In 1989, he left Colegio Juan XXIII to be responsible for the novices in Cochabamba and Oruro.

It was in Peru, Lima, where he committed his first sexual assault, but it was in Bolivia where the majority of cases of sexual abuse of children and adolescents were reported.

The Juan XXIII School in Cochabamba was a boarding school that rescued children from poverty so that they would have a future, for which they were particularly vulnerable children. There, he abused and raped most of his victims, several of whom testified years later to ‘El País’.

Survivors of sexual violence and shattered lives

One of the children who was abused in this Colegio Juan XXIII told the newspaper by video call the first time that Pedrajas Moreno, who everyone called Pica, went to look for him in the community dormitory where the priest visited the beds of several children.

“I woke up and he was touching my genitals. She was 15 years old. I froze, petrified. He told me, in a low voice: ‘Calm down, nothing’s wrong.’ It was terrible”.

As he tells the newspaper, Pica returned and the second time was more “fierce.”

“He masturbated me. He couldn’t defend me. And the guy, while he was masturbating me, said to me: ‘Who do you like? Imagine touching her tits, his ass, his poto [culo]’. I ejaculated and I remember that he even cleaned me and I fell asleep”.

This testimony is just one of the terrible vocal accounts that ‘El País’ gathered in its investigation.

Over the years, the children at school began to talk about the events among themselves, and even with the religious. But they faced the threat of being kicked out of the institute and back into poverty. In fact, several of the students who reported these events were expelled from school.

Another child heard by the newspaper tells of the lasting consequences he suffered after being abused several times by the priest.

“The consequences that the abuse caused me have been devastating for my emotional, affective, economic and work life,” she says.

“Many lives are destroyed. Father Pica had multiple qualities and did a lot of good. But what he did to hundreds of children liquidates everything good, ”another of the former students also concludes.

Cover-up by the Church

On several occasions, Pica recounted the acts of sexual violence to a religious psychologist, a friend, but also several priests, but he was never disturbed by his facts.

In 1978, for example, the priest traveled to Spain and discussed sexual abuse with his instructor, the late priest José Arroyo.

Pica recounted in his diary some of their conversations and the instructor’s views on the matter. According to what has been written, at no time does he advise you to stop assaulting children. In his texts, you can read: “Not feel repentant sinner”, “in the future nothing will happen”, “[son] isolated cases”.

Even when, years later, Pica’s nephew brought the case before the Society of Jesus in Bolivia and the former director of the Cochabamba College with the evidence from the newspaper, he never received an answer about the investigation carried out by the Church.

In total, it is estimated that at least seven provincial superiors and a dozen Bolivian and Spanish clergy covered up their crimes and the complaints of some victims.

Moderate feeling of guilt

It is thanks to the accounts in his intimate diary that these cases of sexual abuse were finally able to come to light. His confessions also show the lucidity of the priest about his actions, the fear of the consequences that could have led, and the moderate guilt that he felt.

“I hurt a lot of people (85?), too many,” he confessed. He also wrote: “the greatest personal failure: without a doubt, pedophilia.” To explain his crimes, he several times accuses “religious repression.”

In 1978, he wrote:

“In Recount of these last 17 years: failure, shame, hypocrisy, smallness, total disorientation. I feel very small. I have done much wrong. I ask for a recreation: if I come back, let it be new. I see everything clearly: my emptiness, a distant God who hides… I’m not that guilty.”

Alfonso Pedrajas stopped writing in his diary in October 2008 and passed away a year later, leaving behind a shocked Bolivian society, many interrogations and several shattered lives.

With EFE and El País