Archbishop justifies abuse
Pujol said that some take advantage of minors because they are “going through a hard time” but then took it back and said it’s “very serious”
A number of cases involving rectors from the archdiocese of Tarragona abusing minors have come to light in recent weeks, and the city’s archbishop Jaume Pujol yesterday attempted to justify some of these cases when he said they could have resulted from the rectors “going through a hard time”. In statements to the media he said: “If a person is obsessed with sex and they go looking for it, that’s one thing, but there are people who are going through a hard time in their lives that leads them to do things that they could then regret for their whole lives.”
The archbishop wanted to discuss the fact that the rectors of Constantí and Arbeca had been dismissed when it was made known that the Vatican was investigating them for allegations of child abuse from 2015 to 2016. Pujol said that the two rectors “at this time cannot be in the parishes” because it is difficult for “people to understand”. And then he went even further, saying: “They may have made mistakes and errors, but this is not serious enough to mean they ought to be unfrocked.”
The Tarragona CUP party pointed out that these justifications “normalize” child abuse and “perpetuate” abuser and pedophile cover-ups, in fact the archbishop’s statements rattled a lot of people, and he was forced to rectify his statement hours later. In his new statement he shook off responsibility, and claimed that some of the media had interpreted his words “as if he were trying to minimize the importance of the occurences”. Pujol also said he felt that “any action of this type, improper from anybody and still more from a rector” is “very serious”.