The Photograph and the Great Door

Madrid, June 7, 2026. Before the great door of the Apostolic Nunciature stands a man holding a placard and a large photograph of Pope Leo XIV. His name is Miguel Hurtado, the first to report the abuses that occurred at Montserrat Abbey. He asks for something seemingly simple: that the institution acknowledge the harm done and that the abbey repair the consequences of the abuse he suffered at the age of sixteen.

The response he receives is not an invitation to enter, nor a word of pastoral welcome. For him, the door remains closed. Inside the palace, as also indicated by the official itinerary of the trip, the Pope is meeting privately with members of the Order of Saint Augustine. Outside, Hurtado speaks to a photograph of the pontiff, entrusting to that paper presence the words he would have liked to say to him in person.

There is a painful contrast in this scene. Inside, a private meeting takes place. Outside, a survivor must construct a symbolic tableau to make his plea for truth, justice, and reparation heard.

To remain on the threshold, excluded from the official narrative, seems to be the fate of those who choose not to play the part of the pacified victim.

The Illusion of Selective Listening

The issue is not merely the missed encounter. It is the immense gulf that separates public rhetoric from concrete actions.

In those same days, Pope Leo XIV's trip takes him to Catalonia and the Marian shrine of Montserrat, a millennial spiritual center but also one of the symbolic sites of the abuses that have shaken Spain. In his official speeches, the pontiff chooses the path of prudence. He speaks of fraternity, unity, and paths to healing. Yet, during his visit to the abbey, he does not mention the abuses that occurred there, nor the responsibilities that emerged from the investigations into the monk Andreu Soler and their concealment.

Care and closeness are confined to a protected space: a private meeting in Madrid with six survivors, chosen by the organizers without involving the most critical associations. A discreet listening session that, precisely because of its selectivity, risks appearing as a reputation-management tool rather than a public act of justice.

When closeness becomes an invitation-only event, heavily guarded and prearranged, it loses some of its power. Meetings with representatives of culture, art, the economy, and sports find a place on the agenda; however, for many survivor associations, the encounter never materializes.

The Strategic Error of Information Control

Behind this painful account emerges a methodological problem that goes beyond the crucial moral issue. We are facing a precise and repeated error in crisis communication, a strategic myopia that has persisted for decades and is based on the assumption that the flow of information can still be controlled.

The Church's communication apparatus still operates according to the rules of an old hierarchical mentality, where authority unilaterally decides what to show, when to talk about it, and to whom to grant a voice. In today's media landscape, this approach systematically produces serious short circuits.

This dynamic first and foremost manifests as a denial of reality. The illusion of being able to draw a veil of silence over Montserrat is immediately thwarted by investigative journalism and the physical presence of survivors at the sites of the papal visit.

Added to this is the boomerang effect of exclusion. Closing the door to critical figures like Miguel Hurtado does not make their voices disappear. It amplifies them, shifting media attention from the Pope's message of fraternity to the refusal of public engagement.

The ultimate result is a loss of control over the agenda. By denying public and transparent dialogue, the institution cedes to others the power to define the framework of the visit, which for a segment of public opinion ceases to be merely a pilgrimage of peace and becomes a new chapter in the opaque management of abuse cases. As long as communication is understood as a tool to defend the reputation of the leadership rather than as a space for truth, any attempt at crisis management risks producing further reputational damage.

The Trap of Spiritual Language

The second major methodological error lies in a short circuit of communicative categories. The institution insists on responding to concrete demands, made on legal, historical, and economic grounds, primarily using theological and spiritual vocabulary.

Victims do not ask for metaphors or poetic descriptions of their pain. When the Church describes abuse as a wound or an open sore, it uses language that may acknowledge suffering but remains elusive if not followed by verifiable actions.

This use of language creates an unbridgeable gap because it substitutes the abstract concept of sin for legal responsibility, thereby diluting the duty to account to civil authorities. At the same time, it transforms reparative action, which would require specific compensation and transparency regarding archives, into a general promise of prayer or inner purification. Finally, it excludes survivors from the real healing process, as the criteria for forgiveness and reconciliation are once again unilaterally established by the clergy.

In effective crisis management, language must align with the nature of the problem. Speaking of prevention and a culture of care loses credibility if, in the meantime, adequate compensation is denied to those whose youth was shattered by a minister of the Church.

Survivors Are Not Symbols

Who are we choosing to be when we prefer the silence of our altars to the cry of those demanding truth?

The request for financial compensation is not a material demand, but the civil form by which a society acknowledges the existence of irreparable harm. To reduce reparation to a request for spiritual forgiveness, while refusing adequate compensation and full transparency, means making purely decorative use of others' suffering.

On the threshold of Montserrat, while fraternity and social peace are celebrated, Miguel Hurtado and many others remain outside, invisible to official discourse but present with the force of their testimony.

Credibility is not rebuilt with symbolic gestures behind closed doors, but with the courage to welcome even the most uncomfortable voices and to accept that justice is not defined solely from above. Only when that great door stops closing in the face of those seeking truth can we truly begin to speak of healing.