An order from the Vatican led two fervent faithful to uncover a cruel network of pederasty in Colombia with 38 alleged aggressors. The priests came to rotate one of the victims in a plot that has already reached the ears of the Holy See.
Until Villavicencio, a city of half a million inhabitants 123 kilometers from Bogotá with a cathedral in the central square, came the instruction of Pope Francis.
In 2019, Bishop Óscar Urbina was in charge, at the request of the pope, of investigating possible sexual abuse committed by priests.
The prelate relied on Olga Cristancho (68 years old) and Socorro Martínez (59): the first, a seasoned ex-prosecutor and the other, a former official from the Attorney General’s Office with experience in investigating massacres.
Shortly after, they left Urbina with the suspicion that he was covering up for the priests, and they set out to investigate on their own.. “It never crossed my mind” what I would discover, Cristancho confesses to AFP in an interview.
There are at least 20 victims. The scandal grew with the book “This is the Lamb of God” by journalist Juan Pablo Barrientos, whom they have tried to censor.
Barrientos delved into the findings of the two researchers and last year published the testimonies and clues that commit 38 priests of the Archdiocese of Villavicencio in abusive acts or carnal access.
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The Church discreetly separated 20 of them and two more are in prison. Some are accused of even inducing one of the victims into “prostitution,” Father William Prieto confirmed to AFP.
“It will be up to the courts, both civil and canonical, to give a verdict,” adds the spokesman for the Archdiocese.
The prosecution declined to speak about the processes that affect the powerful Church in a country with a Catholic majority.
“They were rotated”
In Villavicencio, Cristancho keeps a plaster Virgin Mary in the garden of his house. She still feels “dismayed” by the abuses she helped uncover.
As a prosecutor, he had unmasked Luis Alfredo Garavito, the biggest sexual predator and murderer of minors in Colombia (172 victims).
Retired, she accepted Bishop Urbina’s invitation. He told me to “comply with very specific and very important guidelines that His Holiness had given”, he evokes.
Along with his partner, he compiled the “evidence” in the style of “Spotlight”, the award-winning film that reconstructs the journalistic investigation in the United States on pedophile priests.
She remembers with emotion one of the victims who told her how the priests rotated him from the age of 15.
Between them they handled a password, “which was a CD (compact disc)”. One said to another “I’ll send you that CD there, but (in reality) it was like ‘there I’ll send that boy that you can make him a proposal (…) and he will surely accept it because of the needs he has’”, he says.
The two women sent the Vatican the results of their investigations, and are still awaiting a response.
Under the same papal directive, the Church in France revealed that some 216,000 minors were victims of priests between 1950 and 2020.
“Dirty”
Miguel (not his real name) used to spend his vacations in Villavicencio as a child. He remembers that his family liked him to go to the parish house where his priestly uncle lived.
There was his abuser, a seminarian who manipulated him into giving or receiving fellatio.
“He knew how to manage trust with my uncle, trust with my family, so that I would go (…) to the sheets” with him, he tells AFP, hiding his face.
As an adult, while studying law, he understood that his memories were those of abuse. He fell into “shock”. At 26 years old, he abhors aggression. He had, he says, “ultraviolent attitudes” and depressive symptoms.
He filed a complaint with the Archdiocese without receiving a response. “I wanted to end my life, I couldn’t find a reason (…) I felt dirty,” he adds.
AFP tried unsuccessfully to contact Bishop Urbina by phone and WhatsApp.
Enemies
Socorro Martínez, the ex-prosecutor’s quixotic companion, avoids going to the cathedral that she visited every Sunday.
“I hardly go out anywhere”, loose fearfully. One of his children received a call in which they told him that his mother was a “sapa” (informer).
“They [los miembros del arzobispado] they do consider me their enemy, because I revealed that information (…) We were the stone in their shoe”, adds the penalist.
On January 27, Martínez and Cristancho testified before a prosecutor investigating these sexual assaults.
So far only one of the victims, abused as a 13-year-old altar boy, has found justice.. A priest and a seminarian pay jail for this case. Some priests involved in the plot have unsuccessfully filed seven legal actions to remove Barrientos’ book from circulation.
“They do not admit anything, they deny everything (…) there is no justice, there is no truth, there is no reparation”, regrets the journalist who dared to remove the secrets of the Church. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
