Title: Pastoral and practical response to those who have abused
Date: Monday, November 9, 2026
Time: 2:00–4:00 PM (Rome time)
Format: Online
Audience: Webinar open to everyone
Languages: Spanish, English, Italian, French

Victims and survivors must always be at the center of the Church’s response and
receive protection, care, and recognition of the harm they have suffered.

Precisely to prevent new victims and seek to protect communities, it is necessary
for Church authorities to provide a competent and systematic pastoral, institutional,
and practical response to those who have committed abuse.

This webinar will present general criteria that integrate safeguarding, risk
management, clear boundaries, accountability, and compliance with relevant
measures, along with forms of support that foster acknowledgment of
responsibility, reparation, and processes of change.

Likewise, we will reflect on how to maintain a response that does not minimize the
abuse or substitute for the demands of protection, justice, and prevention, but that
is also firm, just, and humane.

The speaker will be Irma Patricia Espinosa Hernández, a medical doctor, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, with a degree in Theology and a Master’s degree in Humanities. She specializes in criminal psychology, criminal profiling and negotiation, personality and non-verbal language, and is a certified international criminal profiler. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in Forensic Psychopathology and a Master’s degree in Dogmatic Theology. For several years, she has specialized in research and in providing support to those who have committed sexual abuse against minors and vulnerable persons in ecclesial settings. Since September 2022, she has been a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons and is also a member of the National Council for the Protection of Minors of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference. She is Academic Director of the Centro de Investigación y Formación Interdisciplinar para la Protección de los Menores (CEPROME Latinoamérica) and a founding member of the Latin American Council of CEPROME Latinoamérica. She served as a trainer at the Seminario Conciliar de México and, since 2019, has provided consultancy to Apostolic Nunciatures, Episcopal Conferences, dioceses and religious congregations throughout Latin America on cases involving sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable persons. She is also a lecturer and invited speaker at various universities in Latin America, Spain and Rome.