Senior Bolivian Jesuits charged with covering up abuse

Bolivia’s attorney general accused the country’s Jesuit provincial of covering up an historic case of child sex abuse.

Fr Bernardo Mercado SJ allegedly concealed the rape of a child in 1961 by a former Archbishop of La Paz, the late Alejandro Mestre.

According to the Spanish daily El País, the Valencia-born Mestre – who allegedly twice raped a child in a Bolivian school – was the first Spanish bishop accused of sexual abuse.

In 1982, he was appointed an auxiliary of the Archdiocese of La Paz and, at one point served as secretary general of the Bolivian bishops’ conference. He died in 1988.

Juan Lanchipa, the attorney general, also announced investigations of two former Jesuit provincials: 52-year-old Osvaldo Chirveches and Ignacio Suñol, a Spaniard now in his eighties.

In a statement, the attorney general’s office said: “According to the elements for conviction gathered by [this] office, in November 2021, Osvaldo Chirveches who was then responsible for healthy environments in the provincial curia became aware of the incident, sending the case to the provincial leader, Ignacio Suñol.”

Suñol had subsequently “instructed the opening of a canon law investigation”, led by Chirveches, who “decided to close the case”, informing the current provincial Mercado, “who after reviewing the records” confirmed the decision to close the case.

Lanchipa said he had requested several precautionary measures against the accused, including forbidding them from leaving Bolivia and placing them under house arrest. They have been prohibited from communicating via any means with the victims. They are also obliged to appear before “any authority designated by the judge”.

With these charges, every provincial of the Society of Jesus in Bolivia from the 1970s until now has been accused of covering up abuse.

The accusation is part of a wide-ranging investigation by the attorney general of paedophilia in Jesuit schools in Bolivia. It was prompted by the publication last year of the diary of Alfonso Pedrajas, a Spanish Jesuit who died in 2009. He confessed in his private journals to having abused at least 85 children in Bolivia and said his superiors had covered up his abuse.

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