Over decades, a Spanish priest, Lucho Roma, abused hundreds of Indigenous girls inBolivia. He photographed them, recorded them on video and documented his crimes in writing. This is the second diary of a pedophile priest that EL PAÍS has managed to access. On this occasion, however, the Society of Jesus carried out investigations that confirmed the crimes. But then, after Roma's death in 2019, they kept them in a drawer, where they remained unpublished. Until today
Julio Núñez
Madrid, 20 June 2024
When the Bolivian ecclesiastical investigators entered the room belonging to the Spanish Jesuit priest Luis María Roma Pedrosa, they found photographs of dozens of half-naked girls in every corner: between the pages of his books, in his personal agenda and on the hard drive of his computer. Many of them were cut out by their silhouettes; others appeared as deformed compositions, like collages, in which the faces, legs and arms of different girls were combined.
Surrounded by all of this child pornography, the investigators — dispatched by the Church — realized that they were in the lair of a monster. They had arrived at the Jesuit residence in Cochabamba in early-March of 2019, at the request of the leadership of the Society of Jesus in Bolivia. There had been a recent complaint levied against Luis Roma — known as “Lucho” — related to pedophilia and child pornography. The investigators’ mission was to gather evidence, interview witnesses and prepare a report with all their findings.
“It was horrible,” a source from the Society of Jesus — also known as the Jesuit Order — explains to EL PAÍS. “There were dozens of photographs. An attempt was made to identify the girls by copying down the names that were written on the back of the photos… we also checked to see if [names] appeared in the diary.”
“What diary?” asked the reporter.
“Lucho wrote a memoir, in which he described everything: the names of the girls and what he did to them.”
Between 1994 and 2005, during his stay as a missionary in Charagua, a small town in the southeast of Bolivia, Lucho Roma recorded, by hand, how he photographed, filmed and sexually abused more than 100 girls, most of them from the Indigenous Guaraní population. At least 70 of these victims are identified by name in his writings.
Roma detailed the excitement that his perversion gave him and the difficulties that he had while carrying out his crimes. There are about 75 pages in all, in no apparent order, distributed among three different folders. Many of the attacks are undated. This is already the second known diary of a Jesuit pedophile priest in Bolivia. In 2023, EL PAÍS published the memoirs of another criminal Spanish priest named Alfonso Pedrajas.
The discovery of Roma’s memoirs had never been revealed to the public, until today. The disturbing writings were baptized by the ecclesiastical investigators as The Charagua Manuscripts.
Extract from the original manuscript.
09-27-2000
I could touch her wherever. I almost really devoured her with my mouth. My hand on her legs and higher up. She insisted she wanted cookies. We went upstairs and I took almost 20 pictures of her. On the bed, sitting, standing, up, down, everything.
The inspectors transcribed the diary and commissioned a medical-psychiatric report, so that experts could study the writings and analyze the criminal sexual behaviors of the Jesuit priest. At the time that this process was conducted, Roma was still living in Bolivia: he was in his eighties and confined to a wheelchair. Around 20 clergy members and laypeople were interviewed about this matter. But the victims had no voice in the report. Although the investigators traveled to Charagua, none of the abused individuals wished to speak with them.
The investigation lasted six months. There was so much evidence against Roma that the accused ultimately signed a confession before a notary: “I let myself be carried away, in some situations, by libidinous acts… with girls between the ages of eight and 11.”
The priest's personal confession: "I, Father Luis María Roma Padrosa S.J., being fully aware of my actions, after meditating before God and asking to be welcomed into his mercy, I confess, freely and voluntarily, that at the time I was stationed in the parish of Charagua, in the years 1998 until 2002, approximately, I let myself be carried away, in some situations, by libidinous acts, inappropriate for a religious person, with girls between the ages of eight and 11, with whom I had a pastoral relationship. It was never my intention to harm any of the girls. In the moments when these behaviors occurred, it was due to a force majeure that I could not control. I recognize the serious offense committed [and] I apologize for the damage that could have been caused to the girls and for having defrauded the trust of their mothers. I am aware of the predilection that Jesus had for girls and boys, and that deepens my regret much more, as a religious person, for the faults committed. I regret that all my pastoral work with the girls, boys, young people and adults of the parish has been thrown into question by such moments of personal weakness. I recognize having damaged the image of the Church and the Society of Jesus, which is my family. Cochabamba, May 15, 2019."
Everything the investigators gathered was included in the devastating report, which confirms the Jesuit Order’s systematic cover-up of this and other cases of pedophilia. But a few weeks before the conclusion was drafted, Roma died in Cochabamba, Bolivia, due to illnesses that he had suffered from for years. He was 84 years old when he passed away on August 6, 2019. Subsequently, the results of the investigation were not made public. The Society of Jesus — the order to which Pope Francis belongs — didn’t inform the Bolivian civil authorities of its findings, nor did it take into account the ecclesiastical inspectors’ recommendation to compensate the victims.
Everything was buried, until just over a year ago. EL PAÍS’s publication of the diary of another Spanish Jesuit priest named Alfonso Pedrajas — in which he admitted that he had sexually assaulted at least 85 children between 1978 and 2000 — caused a media earthquake in the South American country. This caused more cases, like that of Lucho Roma’s, to come to light.
Only after the Pedrajas case caused a scandal did the Jesuit Order inform the Bolivian authorities about the complaint it had received against Lucho Roma, handing over all the documents from the investigation. That is, for a period of four years, the Jesuits hid everything they had: both the pedophilic materials they kept in their archives, as well as Roma’s manuscripts. Only in the face of pressure from the media and the general public did they act. But the justice system closed the case when the victims were not found. All the investigation’s files remained unpublished.
Until now, that is. EL PAÍS has accessed all the expert reports, the interrogations, some of the files that Lucho Roma kept in his room, as well as the internal files kept by the Jesuit Order, which confirm how they hid both this case and others. These include serial abusers that EL PAÍS has exposed, such as Pedrajas and Luis Tó, both from Spain. This newspaper has also interviewed several of Roma’s victims and six of the specialists, witnesses, inspectors and psychologists who participated in the investigation.
These documents reveal more than just the horror of the crimes of a pedophile who abused dozens of girls. They are also proof — never seen before — of how the Church tends to investigate itself, before locking the truth that it has uncovered in a drawer. The Charagua Manuscripts reflect the cover-up that has been taking place for years.
For the first time, an internal Church investigation has been published in detail. And, in this case, it incorporates a first-person account from a serial pedophile.
Extract from the original manuscript.
August 1998
A lot of things can be written like this, in longhand. Oh, how badly I write, what bad handwriting, what a lack of ability to express what is inside me: the truth is that I would eat them (...) I touch them all with my hands... I feel the warmth of the intimate zone, with natural warmth! How beautiful these girls are, naked they smell of soap!
THE PROOF
Roma was born in Barcelona on September 12, 1935. He entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 18 and, two years later, he traveled to South America as a missionary, to continue his religious training. Here began a 66-year-long journey as a Jesuit teacher and priest.
The only available biographical data about the first two decades of his life as a clergyman can be found in his CV: he was a teacher at St Callixtus College in La Paz and at the San Clemente School in Potosí, before returning to Barcelona for three years to study Theology (1965-1968). He then returned to Bolivia and became the director of the Tacata Children’s Home, in Cochabamba.
There are also descriptions from some of his colleagues and superiors:
Classified document from the Jesuits, 1987. Provincial Superior Luis Palomera
He is secretive, uncommunicative, unsociable and even very unkind. (...) He seems to show very little interest in what others are going through. He lives in a very personal, segmented, cerebral world… He works in the shadows.”
When Palomera wrote these lines, Roma was working as his right-hand man in La Paz. Both had known each other since their childhood in Barcelona. So, as soon as Palomera was promoted to the position of superior provincial in 1987 — the highest rank among the Jesuits in Bolivia, with a term that lasts between four and 10 years — Palomera went to Roma and asked him to be his vice-provincial at the headquarters of the Society of Jesus in the city of La Paz (Bolivia’s administrative capital). Roma had already been working there since 1983, as national deputy-director of the Order’s educational centers.
It was at this stage that Roman recorded his first sexual assaults. The documents provided by the canonical inspectors indicate that, on weekends, after he left work at the congregation’s offices, he traveled to Yungas — a small region northeast of La Paz — to visit the Indigenous community of Trinidad Pampa. That’s where he sexually assaulted dozens of girls.
The cities that Lucho Roma passed through in Bolivia
His “obsession” — the word that Roma used to describe his penchant for sexual assault — became a constant in 1994. That’s when a new provincial superior, Marcos Recolons, was promoted. He’s now under house arrest in Bolivia, accused of having covered up for several pedophiles during his mandate.
The year of his ascension, Recolons designated Roma to be a missionary in Charagua, a small town of less than 2,500 inhabitants, the majority hailing from the Guaraní Indigenous community. In a letter that he sent to Recolons that same year, it’s clear that this was a highly-desirable destination for the accused.
Then 59 years old, the Spaniard arrived in that impoverished town in 1994. He served as a parish priest and as director of the new school that the Jesuits had opened. Shortly afterwards, he was named a superior of the Jesuit Order in Charagua. He always carried a camera with him — initially a film camera — and got the photos developed in Santa Cruz, the most populous city in the country. Later, Roma bought a digital camera, which allowed him to print the images in his room.
A local resident clearly remembers the day he arrived. “He was the boss. He dressed impeccably; [his clothes] were always freshly ironed,” she tells EL PAÍS. At the time, the Church had great power and influence in the area, thanks to its humanitarian work. This is why it was common for children to always be within the Church. This source says that Roma quickly surrounded himself with minors. “He was the apostle of children: he filled his van with little girls.”
One of the unpaved streets of Charagua, Bolivia, pictured in 2001, when Lucho Roma carried out his missionary work and sexual abuses. SUOMI 1973
Shortly after arriving, in 1996, Roma began to write The Charagua Manuscripts. The documents only cover up to the year 2001, while the writings found appear incomplete and the entries aren’t always in order. But the stories are terrifying: he details precisely how he gathered the girls into groups, showered with them in his room and took snapshots of them. Days later, he would return to look at these pictures and masturbate.
Charagua, October 31, 1998
Today, 10 girls have passed through my room and I will have taken about 95 pictures of my little darlings.
![The priest's personal confession:
"I, Father Luis María Roma Padrosa S.J., being fully aware of my actions, after meditating before God and asking to be welcomed into his mercy, I confess, freely and voluntarily, that at the time I was stationed in the parish of Charagua, in the years 1998 until 2002, approximately, I let myself be carried away, in some situations, by libidinous acts, inappropriate for a religious person, with girls between the ages of eight and 11, with whom I had a pastoral relationship.
It was never my intention to harm any of the girls. In the moments when these behaviors occurred, it was due to a force majeure that I could not control.
I recognize the serious offense committed [and] I apologize for the damage that could have been caused to the girls and for having defrauded the trust of their mothers.
I am aware of the predilection that Jesus had for girls and boys, and that deepens my regret much more, as a religious person, for the faults committed.
I regret that all my pastoral work with the girls, boys, young people and adults of the parish has been thrown into question by such moments of personal weakness.
I recognize having damaged the image of the Church and the Society of Jesus, which is my family.
Cochabamba, May 15, 2019."](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/EU3E7QTKFZB25AV2R3MWTN7XVE.png?auth=12be55171cf7cfa7fa2f6c1cdf47bd66e5b6dbe3a5f1d86060da1390edb19bf1&width=414)
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