The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) has ruled on the case of the priest from Malaga who allegedly committed crimes of sexual assault. He has been the general secretary, Francisco García Magánwho, despite knowing “the interest of this issue”, has avoided making “a personal assessment” because the case is “under the judge” -pending a judicial resolution-. Therefore, he has indicated that his opinion on the case, and that of the EEC, can be found in the press release published by the diocese of Malaga this Tuesday. “I invite you to go to the diocese of Malaga and inform them there”.
In addition to showing his “condemnation and rejection” of the case, García Magán has stressed that “the iter -canonical-process belongs to the diocese of Málaga. “It is not the responsibility of the Episcopal Conference“.
In the aforementioned note, the diocese states that the bishopric of Malaga has withdrawn the ministerial licenses for him to practice as a priest. It also states that “given the false information published by some media” about the religious’s training, they are forced to clarify that the sexual offender spent a period of training in a congregation, from which he left freely and voluntarily. After some time, he applied to enter the seminary in Malaga, which requested reports – which were positive – from the congregation before accepting him as a seminarian. Finally, the aforementioned seminar accompanied him, making the “usual vocational discernment”, without the problems of which he is now accused of appearing.
The alleged sexual offender, 34 years old and from Vélez-Málaga, was ordained a priest in 2017 and had served as a parish priest in the municipalities of Álora, Ardales and Carratraca, in Málaga, and, more recently, in Melilla.
In January of this year he requested a transfer to the Peninsula for health reasons and the Bishopric of Malaga – on which Melilla depends – assigned him as parish administrator to the towns of Yunquera y The Burg, where his arrest has caused a great commotion among parishioners. It’s been days since he said mass.