Senegalese students of the Piarists, a Catholic monastic order dedicated to teaching and educating children and young people, have been sexually abused for 25 years by a Catalan priest, the Escola Pia de Catalunya order said Thursday.
"The Commission for the Protection of Sexually Abused Minors in the Church in Senegal and the Escola Pia de Catalunya order want to publish a joint work on the sexual abuse of minors by former priest Manel Sales Castella in Senegal from 1980 to 2005," the statement said.
The order itself admitted that the priest committed the crimes with the knowledge of those around him, including students, neighbors from the community, and even, according to some witnesses, school principals and teachers. However, Sales' actions went unpunished, and he reportedly continued his behavior in other countries where he operated.
It wasn't until 2018 that a French female victim filed a complaint against him, accusing him of sexual abuse. The order then demanded an explanation from Sales, who admitted all the facts.
The Escola Pia order informed the Vatican of what had happened, and the process of defrocking the man was initiated. The defrocking took effect in March 2019.
"Escola Pia wants to publicly acknowledge and take responsibility for all the wrong that has been done in the past and condemn actions that are totally unacceptable," the order's statement reads.
Earlier this week, the Spanish newspaper EL PAIS published a new study showing that the number of members of the Catholic Church in Spain who may have been involved in pedophilia has exceeded one thousand, and the number of their victims is estimated at 2,000.
According to the publication, 75% of the identified pedophiles abused boys, 14% abused girls and 2% abused victims of both sexes. Data on the remaining cases have not yet been published.
For its part, the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), which has always refused to disclose what it knows about such crimes, has for years claimed that such cases are very few and only in 2021 admitted 220 cases of pedophilia.
A year later, the number of confirmed cases rose to 506. In early June of this year, it was reported that the Spanish Catholic Church had identified 728 rapists in its ranks, more than 80% of whom were directly religious.
In December 2021, a scandal erupted in Spain after EL PAIS published a report on cases of possible sexual harassment by clergy and some lay members of religious institutions. The publication has been investigating such cases in the Spanish Church since 2018, and has an updated database of all known cases.