Catalonia to probe claims Bolivia was used by Jesuits as ‘dumping ground for pedophiles’

SÃO PAULO, Brazil – Abuse cases committed by Catalan Jesuits in Bolivia will be investigated by the Catalan ombudsman – an office appointed by the regional parliament – following a request from the South American country’s Survivors’ Community.

The group accuses the Catalan province of the Society of Jesus in Spain of turning Bolivia into a kind of “dumping ground for pedophiles” by sending Jesuits there; they were known to have committed sex crimes.

The Bolivian complaints were added to an ongoing investigation into abuse cases reported by former students of Barcelona’s Casp–Sagrat Cor de Jesús School, launched by the parliament’s ombudsman in 2023 after dozens of allegations emerged.

Some of the priests reported by Casp students, like Father Francesc Peris (known as Padre Cesc), were sent to Bolivia, where they continued their history of abuse.

Cesc, for example, had been abusing people in Catalonia since the 1960s. After several complaints, his province decided to transfer him to South America in 1983. There, he worked at the Juan XXIII School in Cochabamba.

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Cesc Peris — who was widely known as an abuser at Casp, to