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He ravaged The Boy in the Striped Pajamas , a novel about the Holocaust that has sold more than seven million copies. Now he publishes in Spain Las Huellas del Silencio (Ed. Salamandra), about the victims in Ireland of pedophile priests.

His book is dedicated both to those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of priests and to all those honest and dedicated priests who have "been tainted by the acts of their colleagues." You hardly ever talk about them, do you? I actually asked myself what would become of all those priests who have not committed any crime and who suddenly are singled out, they see that they fall into the same bag as the others. It is right there where I started this book, with the idea of ​​a good priest, of a priest who is a good man. He has interviewed several priests to write this book. After the sexual abuse scandals, do you feel under suspicion for wearing a neck strap? A priest friend tells me that he now thinks twice before approaching a child ... I remember a priest who lived next to my house, and who told me that if a child had an accident and, full of blood, He rang his bell, the first thing he would do would be to shut the door in his face. That is the terrible legacy that pedophile priests have left to those who are not. Father Odran Yates, the priest who stars in "The Footprints of Silence", is not a pedophile or commits any crime. But in the end a gray character is revealed ... As I was writing the book, I realized that it was someone who had somehow been an accomplice. And that's what I wanted to convey to the reader, to make him ask himself questions like: Is someone an accomplice if they decide to look the other way? Is someone who doesn't want to know guilty? Father Yates is a coward, someone who does not want to see what is happening, who pretends that nothing strange happens. And in the end he realizes that he has failed people. He has not committed any crime, it is true, but he is part of an organization in which terrible crimes have been committed and he has done nothing to prevent it. Father Tom Cardle is clearly the monster: the priest who sexually abuses minors and the that their superiors transfer every two by three from the parish to cover it up. But he is also a character full of nuances: he hints that he had a very difficult childhood, that he was forced to enter a weekly newspaper and that in some way he was sexually castrated ... It was that this really happened frequently. Many families sent one of their children to the seminary because being a priest was prestigious ... The seminaries were full of kids without any experience in life, without any sexual experience. I am not trying to justify his crimes at all. But it is important to understand how a person can change and become a pervert. For me one of the most complicated things at the time of writing this novel was finding humanity in those types of criminals, finding good within evil. This is his first novel set in Ireland, his native country. Why? Indeed, until I wrote this novel, I had always placed the stories in my books outside of Ireland. Actually, because I had never written anything too personal. But I got to a point in my life where I felt confident and experienced enough to write something that reflected events from my own existence. And what does this book reflect from its own existence? Well, I grew up in the world that I relate inThe Footprints of SilenceI went to school where the character of Father Yates teaches. Furthermore, it seemed to me that the Irish writers were not really writing about the Church and the sexual abuse scandal, to me the most important event in contemporary Irish history. And, having grown up in that environment, I felt I had a story to tell. With this book, all the memories of what growing up in Ireland meant to me began to sprout. And although it is a dark book, I quite enjoyed writing it, because I felt that the story turned out quite well for me and that I was in a good position to tell it. And what was it like to be a child in the Ireland of the 70s-80s? In many ways, I was lucky, I had a wonderful childhood. On one side of my house lived a priest and on the other, eight nuns. I went to a Catholic school and acted as an altar boy. I was quite shy and introverted, but at school I felt comfortable, I felt like I was part of it. I never had a bad experience as an altar boy. But many of the good memories that I keep from my childhood have been tarnished by the revelations of abuses that came to light. Does the fact that the Church in Ireland had so much power for so many years, does it explain that those abuses could be perpetrated for so many years without that the scandal broke? Yes. The Church controlled everything, everything ... It even controlled the Government. It controlled the ministers of Health, it controlled the policies of that ministry and, in particular, those that referred to the bodies of women. The Government, basically, was accountable to the Church. This has been the case since 1922, when Ireland became independent from the United Kingdom and became an independent state. For example, the Irish Constitution included Ireland as a Catholic country. The Church had all the power, and that power peaked in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, in which it controlled absolutely everything, in which women were not allowed to work after marriage, there were no contraceptives, homosexuality It was illegal ... When did the change begin? Things only began to change in the early 1990s, when Mary Robinson was elected president, and from the slow but persistent revelations of sexual abuse that began to surface and spread. which the media began to report. Because in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the media would not have reported anything and, if someone went to the police to report, that report did not prosper. When the parents of abused children came to the bishop, he simply limited himself to changing the priest in question from parish. There was an idea that canon law was above civil law. And that has changed. Was it very difficult for someone like you, who is gay, to grow up in Ireland with the messages against homosexuality that the Church constantly sent? It was hard, yes. When I was a teenager, gay relationships were illegal in Ireland. And then there was the AIDS crisis, which was talked about a lot on the radio, in the news, and in a way that gave you the feeling that it was a punishment from God. For many people of my generation our first intimate relationships, of sex, were clandestine, in the darkness of a park. And that made you feel dirty, made you feel that what you were doing was disgusting. It takes a long time to get that out of your mind. To write this book you have spoken to abuse victims and priests, right? . Yes, I have spoken to victims and priests. The only ones I have not interviewed are priests who have committed abuse and are in prison. But I have spoken to many priests of that generation. He wanted to know if they felt responsible in any way, as far as they knew, and do they feel responsible in any way? They had the unanimous feeling that they had abandoned those children. I did not feel that they were trying to justify what happened, it seemed to me that they were honest, and I left those meetings with the feeling that they recognized what had happened. It also seemed to me that they felt a certain disaffection towards the Church, that they were not satisfied with it, that they questioned it. I noticed that disaffection for the Church in many priests, for them the whole scandal of sexual abuse had been very traumatic. It seemed to me that the older ones kept going, kept doing their jobs and continuing with their lives, but without a great sense of spirituality. I do not know if I explain myself: I did not have the feeling that they were in contact with God. What do you think of Francisco? Do you think that with this Pope things are changing within the Church? Yes, I think so. It seems to me that Francisco is really a great breath of fresh air. I wish I was 20 years younger, to give him time to change everything that needs to be changed. I like Pope Francis, his humility, his ability to recognize that he does not have an answer for everything, that he is taking the Church back to its basic principles: helping others, doing good ... The five more words Important ones that I have never heard a pontiff say were uttered by him, when on board the papal flight they asked him about the gays and he replied: "Who am I to judge?" It is practically impossible to imagine any of its predecessors saying something like that. I have the feeling that Francisco is a good man with a difficult job. And I hope that when his time comes someone of his character will succeed him. Will the Church recover from the pedophile scandals? If it continues to make changes, I think so. If you spend less time telling people how you have to live their lives and focus on your original message, in your sense of community, of helping others, I think so. But that is applicable to any Church, not only to the Catholic. It is about religious institutions worrying less about money, symbols and power and more about helping others and living as Pope Francis does. This is how people will return to the Church. You received a Catholic education as a child. Are you a believer? The truth is, I don't know. I think I am not, but on the other hand, I tend to believe in something like God. So I do not know. I am not an atheist, but I am not religious either. Let's say I'm halfway between the two things.

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