Padre Pica : Cartografía de un abusador en la iglesia

"I hurt many people (85 of them?); too many." At just eighteen, the Spanish priest Alfonso Pedrajas—known as Father Pica—became a Jesuit missionary to help the poorest in Bolivia, a country where he worked as a teacher until his death in 2009. Yet, behind the image of a compassionate man of the cloth lurked a predator who sexually abused the very children he had sworn to protect—particularly those in his care at the Juan XXIII boarding school in Cochabamba. It seemed his crimes would remain buried by silence and the passage of time, but in 2020, his nephew Fernando discovered a copy of Father Pica’s diary in the family attic; in it, the priest confessed to all the horrors he had inflicted. After unsuccessful attempts to report the matter to the authorities and the religious order, Fernando handed the diary to journalist Julio Núñez Montaña, who was investigating similar cases for the newspaper *El País*. Like a compass, the material led the reporter to Bolivia. That journey yielded the candid testimonies of several victims, statements from Jesuits who had attempted to cover up the abuse, and insights into the response of the Bolivian government and prosecutors after the published report triggered a media and political firestorm. This book is, then, a compelling and invaluable chronicle of that journey of discovery and restitution—a tapestry in which the stories of abusers, victims, and the author himself intertwine to reveal a reality: how the Catholic Church allowed these crimes to persist with total impunity.