Madrid, Spain, Apr 25, 2022 / 15:55 pm
During his address opening the Spanish Bishops’ Conference’s Plenary Assembly on Monday, Cardinal Juan José Omella Omella of Barcelona expressed his pain over the sexual abuse committed by members of the Church and his desire to clarify what happened.
"The Church expresses its profound pain and once again asks for forgiveness for the crimes committed by our brothers," Cardinal Omella, the conference president, said April 25.
He also noted that "in order to address the drama of the abuse and improve the procedures that the different ecclesial entities have put in place, the conference has commissioned the prestigious law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo to carry out an independent audit of the way the cases of sexual abuse that occurred within the Catholic Church in Spain were handled. The audit will be carried out on all the cases documented to date and those that may be presented both to that firm and to the diocesan offices while the study is being carried out.”
This is a step of the conference that Cardinal Omella said is part of "a long course undertaken for years and which doesn’t detract from the work of the dioceses and religious orders, but rather supports and complements it."