Bolivian Catholic Church Abuse Response Commissions

In late April 2023, an investigation by the Spanish newspaper El Pais revealed the private 383 page diary of Alfonso Pedrajas, a Spanish Jesuit priest who died of cancer in 2009, found years after his death by his nephew. In it Pedrajas recorded his own abuse of as many as 85 minors at Catholic boarding schools in Bolivia during the 1970s and 1980s, and named at least seven superiors and a dozen clergymen as having known of it at the time. Pope Francis dispatched Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, the same Vatican investigator who had worked the 2018 Chile case, to Bolivia to meet with the country's bishops. On 24 May 2023 the Bolivian Bishops' Conference issued a public statement acknowledging, in its own words, "we have been part, directly or indirectly, of deep pain caused to innocent people," and admitting the church had been "deaf to their sufferings" rather than protecting them. The bishops announced two new bodies in response: a National Listening Commission and a National Investigation Commission, tasked with determining responsibility and examining what had occurred. Beyond Pedrajas, both accounts describe further allegations reported against other Jesuits, two Carmelites and a Franciscan, without naming any living individual as accused.