A report published in April by the Spanish newspaper El Pais broke the scandal, revealing that the Spanish Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno, who died in 2009, sexually abused as many as 85 boys and adolescents in the 1970s and 1980s and that the Jesuits allegedly covered it up.
Pedrajas’ nephew discovered the diary in a file on the deceased priest’s laptop. He first approached the Spanish public prosecutor’s office with the information but was told it could not pursue the case as the incidents took place beyond the statute of limitations.
The nephew next contacted the Society of Jesus in Bolivia without results. He also approached Luis Carrasco, principal of the John XXIII School in Cochabamba, where Pedrajas served as rector for years, who told him he didn’t know anything about the situation and was not in a position to help.
Finally, the nephew went to El País, which published an investigative report.
A copy of the diary was received by Father Bernardo Mercado, the Jesuit provincial in Bolivia, arriving in a sealed envelope that came from Rome via courier, sent by the general curia of the Society of Jesus, which in turn had received it from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF).
The Jesuits turned over the envelope “unopened, just as it was received” to the Bolivian attorney general’s office on June 20 but denied knowing how the DDF had gotten a copy.