The Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, made public last October 27 the Report on sexual abuse in the area of ??the Catholic Church and the role of the public authorities, whose slogan is “A necessary response”. The document, of 779 pages, generated a significant social and media impact. La Vanguardia reported on it in its digital edition and in print, which opened the front page with the headline “The Ombudsman puts the number of victims of abuse in the Church at more than 400,000”. Both the web and the paper newspaper picked up the reply the next day by Cardinal Juan José Omella, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, calling the figure (also published by other major media) an intentional “lie”.
Several readers and subscribers have written to me questioning, just like Omella, the validity of that figure and requesting a rectification. In the messages received, it is emphasized that the data does not appear in the report, in which, on the contrary, it is stated that “it was not part of its task to make a calculation of the number of people affected by sexual abuse in the field of the Catholic Church”.
So where does the data for more than 400,000 people come from if it did not appear in the report? As explained in the published news, this is a projection based on a survey of 8,013 citizens that forms part of the report, in which it is pointed out that 1.13% of the Spanish population would have suffered abuse in the religious field. Given a population of 47 million, this percentage would give the published figure. Readers familiar with this calculation, however, object that this correlation cannot be established and that surveys are not exact sciences, but are subject to a margin of error.
Was it a mistake, then, to turn that percentage into a number? The Ombudsman’s report indicated that the aim of the survey was to find “a solid empirical basis” to “determine the prevalence of the phenomenon” and to know its “dimension”, and this is what the newspaper proposed from the available data.
A goal that in no way understands the deep respect from the newspaper (with special pages on Sundays) towards all religious beliefs, their representatives and faithful and their special attention to the Christian faith, the majority in our country.
