The Diocese of Tenerife says it "is unaware of" Álvarez's recording and its "context"

The Diocese of Tenerife said this Thursday that it was unaware of the recording of the previous bishop of the diocese, Bernardo Álvarez, who died last November, in which he stated that minors had provoked him when he was a priest in La Palma and linked pedophilia in the Church with homosexuality.

In a brief statement of barely four paragraphs, the Diocese has assured that it is unaware of the context in which that recording was made, made by a citizen who suffered abuse as a child and who met with Álvarez.

The Diocese has also expressed its "absolute rejection" of any type of abuse committed against minors and concludes by pointing out "the importance of resorting to the current legal channel for victims to report cases to the judicial authorities."

"I have experience of that, as a priest: girls and boys of 13 or 14 years old who have provoked me. Keep in mind that a few years ago the age of sexual consent was 14 years old. Now it is 16 or 18," Bernardo Álvarez is heard saying in audios recorded by the complainant and revealed this Thursday by El País and Cadena SER.

These recordings are made public two and a half months before Pope Leo XIV visits the two dioceses of the Canary Islands, with a multitudinous mass scheduled in Tenerife on June 12, and have been handed over by the complainant of the facts to both the Prosecutor's Office and the Vatican's Commission for the Protection of Minors.