Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Vázquez de Coronado, San José Province, Costa Rica · 2024

Manuel Antonio Guevara Fonseca: eighteen-year sentence for abuse of a child altar server

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Catholic priest, parish authority over an altar server

Organization

Catholic parish in Vázquez de Coronado

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The cited record identifies clerical authority, altar-service access, parish trust, and repeated private access as the material spiritual doctrine, practice, authority, or pretext connected to the documented harm. The relevant authority role is Catholic priest and parish authority over an altar server.

Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2024-04-03 · unanimous trial judgment

Second Judicial Circuit Criminal Court of San José, Costa Rica. The court convicted Guevara of six sexual-abuse offenses committed in 2007 against a twelve-year-old altar server and imposed eighteen years in prison.

Documented coercion mechanisms

clerical authority
altar-service access
parish trust
repeated private access

Cited record

Sources

court reporting judgment report Teletica, 'Sacerdote condenado a 18 años cárcel por abusar sexualmente de monaguillo en Coronado' (Apr. 3, 2024).: Contemporaneous reporting quotes the judiciary's announcement of unanimous judgment 240-2024 and records the eighteen-year sentence, six offenses, 2007 date and altar-server relationship.
high quality reporting judgment corroboration El País, 'Una nueva condena por pederastia golpea a la Iglesia católica en Costa Rica' (Apr. 6, 2024).: Independent reporting corroborates the conviction and sentence, identifies the 2007 parish and altar-service context and notes that an appeal remained possible at publication.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.teletica.com/sucesos/sacerdote-condenado-a-18-anos-carcel-por-abusar-sexualmente-de-monaguillo-en-coronado_355697 Corpus classification: court-reporting; evidentiary role: judgment-report. SHA-256 3bfe398ef7b3bf5d012d168df7a5a64cf815819907bb5a78cc5acda1d401c4d2
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://elpais.com/america/2024-04-06/una-nueva-condena-por-pederastia-golpea-a-la-iglesia-catolica-en-costa-rica.html Corpus classification: high-quality-reporting; evidentiary role: judgment-corroboration. SHA-256 25f1d6b9b3848bd6b2e902e9bb12ed7b81da695bdc64d32f07f9840a3aac960a
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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