Overview
- A 2024 recording released by Spanish media captures Bishop Bernardo Álvarez minimizing child abuse, saying 13- or 14-year-olds “provoked” priests and claiming most abusers were homosexual.
- The victim, Ciro Molina, has given the audio to the Tenerife prosecutor and the Vatican’s child-protection commission, and church sources say the Holy See is weighing a formal probe.
- Álvarez is heard admitting the diocese moved the accused priest to new posts, including a year in Salamanca and later a chaplaincy, reflecting a past practice of transfers over sanctions.
- Molina says the abuse ran from 1997 to 2003 starting when he was 9 or 10, judges ruled the case time‑barred in 2014, and a church process ended after the priest left the clerical state.
- The leak lands weeks before a planned papal visit to the Canary Islands and has energized victims’ groups, while Álvarez’s dismissal of Molina’s public plea as “a setup” echoes the backlash victims say they have faced.