Holy PR

by Patty Debonitas

The Spanish Catholic church has published the figures from an investigation it had commissioned on the number of children that were abused by members of its clergy. They found 2056 victims in their paperwork. It added that ’The Church remains committed to learn about all the cases…’

Sounds so orderly and believable, doesn’t it? Until you remember that three months previously the national Spanish ombudsman published figures from the survey he had commissioned. 0.6% of the more than 8000 interviewees stated that they had been sexually abused by a member of the clergy. This would equate to more than 200000 adults who were abused as children since 1940.

It was level-headed statistics that broke the silence on the horrendous amount of victims. The Church had nothing to counter it with, none of their holy anaesthetics could numb the population against this pain. They resorted to donning a civilised facade and produced their own numbers. Abracadabra.

It’s the Church doing what they do best, running their PR machine at full throttle.

It has no interest in coming clean. It’s its basic survival instinct.
You realise the Church in Spain is nowhere nearer to being civilised than the average cavemen ever was. It’s just that the Church is far better at managing their public profile machine and it has far more means and influence than any caveman could dream of.

It’s a strategy to avoid being held accountable for the true extent of the abuse that happened and the continuous attempts to cover it up. If the tide of religious sentiments of people hadn’t turned, neither the Church nor the Spanish state would be investigating anything.

23 December 2023