Bolivia: Jesuit priest's own diary, confirmed by his family and investigated by the Vatican and Bolivian prosecutors, documents his abuse of 85 boarding-school children

Proceedings

1. 2023-05-01 · posthumous documentary finding and referral

   Society of Jesus (Vatican-directed review) and Fiscalía, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Pedrajas's nephew turned over a print-out of his uncle's diary, in which Pedrajas recorded abusing 85 minors at Jesuit boarding schools in Cochabamba from the 1970s to the 1990s; the diary's contents, first published by El País in April 2023, prompted the Society of Jesus in Bolivia to confirm its authenticity, the Vatican to send a copy to Bolivian authorities, and Cochabamba prosecutors to open an investigation, joining at least a dozen other clergy-abuse probes already under way in Bolivia. Pedrajas died in 2009 and was never prosecuted; separate 2026 Bolivian court proceedings against Jesuit superiors addressed concealment of his abuse, not his own personal guilt, and are not the basis of this record.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• residential boarding-school authority over poor children with limited family oversight
• clerical status as a trusted teacher-priest inside Jesuit institutions
• the diary itself records his own systematic method of selecting and silencing victims over two decades