A bishop is being investigated over allegations of sexual abuse in the first case of its kind in Spain.
The Vatican and the Spanish Catholic Church are investigating following a complaint filed earlier this year by a man who said he had been abused between the ages of 14 and 21 by Rafael Zornoza, who is currently the bishop of the cities of Cádiz and Ceuta.
The accusations date back to the mid-1990s, when Mr Zornoza, now 76, headed a seminary in Getafe, near Madrid. The complainant says the abuse began when he attended the seminary at weekends.
“It was at night when he would come into the bedroom and I suffered the abuses,” he wrote in an email he sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to which El País newspaper had access.
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“I write this letter only with the intention of ensuring that what happened to me should not keep happening to another child,” he wrote.
The alleged victim also said that, after coming out to Zornoza as gay, the clergyman had taken him to conversion therapy sessions. The complainant said that earlier this year he confronted the bishop, who, he said “acknowledged the manipulation and abuse”.
Mr Zornoza, who became bishop of Cádiz and Ceuta in 2011, has not given a personal response to the allegations. However, the diocese of Cádiz and Ceuta has issued a statement.
“The accusations being made, referring to events that took place nearly 30 years ago, are very serious and, what’s more, false,” it read. The diocese also said that the bishop has temporarily cancelled public engagements “in order to clarify the facts and to receive treatment for an aggressive cancer.”
The vice-president of Spain’s Episcopal Council and cardinal of Madrid, José Cobo, described the case as “a drama” for the Church.
“If the Holy See has admitted [the case] then there must be plausibility,” he said, adding that the investigation will be “exhaustive and very efficient”. He also requested that the bishop’s right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise be respected.
Zornoza has long been a controversial figure in the southern city of Cádiz, where a group of local Catholics filed a complaint to Pope Francis about what they saw as his autocratic and “sectarian” style.
The action currently being taken by the Church is a preliminary probe. However, it is the first time that a bishop in Spain has been investigated following allegations of abuse.
A 2023 public inquiry held by the ombudsman estimated that up to 440,000 Spaniards had suffered sexual abuse linked to the Catholic Church. The Church has criticised those findings and a government proposal for victims of clerical abuse to receive compensation, describing it as “singling out” the institution.
