The Bolivian Community of Survivors (CBS) asked Pope Leo XIV for a “just and definitive” answer to the accusations of child abuse that fall, above all, on Jesuits who carried out missions in the country, highlighting the lack of institutional action and impunity that reigns among religious.
© Getty Images
07/11/2026
by
Lusa
A Bolivian Community of Survivors (CBS) today asked Pope Leo XIV for a “just and definitive” answer to the accusations of child abuse that fall, above all, on Jesuits who carried out missions in the country.
Pope Leo XIV began a 12-day trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru in South America.
“ Abuses in Bolivia have not received an appropriate institutional response, despite the denunciations presented at the Bolivian Episcopal Conference, the Apostolic Nunciature and Cardinal Toribio Ticona, today denounced CBS in an open letter to the Pope.
The community regretted the impunity that reigns among Jesuits, because of what it classified as an “institutional structure that facilitated protecting their crimes”.
So he asked the high pontiff to “include time” during his trip to South America to listen to victims of clerical abuse in Bolivia.
In the document, the community referred to the Tacata Orphanage, in the Cochabamba Center, where there were “almost 150 victims” of sexual abuse, allegedly committed by at least five Jesuits.
CBS also identified in the Juan XXIII school in Cochabamba, “400 victims of five Jesuits who were directors, educators, nurses and spiritual guides”.
On the other hand, he reported the complaints about the home for orphan and homeless children Colonia Piraí, in the east of Santa Cruz, where “another 150 victims” were identified.
Another 35 victims are listed in the missive, in a case involving the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) of International Children's Defense and its leader – a priest.