Argentina: former nun found guilty of abusing the deaf children of Próvolo

On 22 August 2026, the Supreme Court of Justice of Mendoza, Argentina, overturned the 2023 acquittal of Kumiko Kosaka, a former religious sister, and found her guilty of sexual crimes committed against deaf children at the Próvolo institute in Luján de Cuyo. A 51-year-old Japanese woman, who left religious life after the complaints were filed, she was found guilty on five counts: necessary participation in the abuses of the priest Horacio Corbacho for two of them, and direct perpetrator of simple sexual abuse for the other three. The sentence, which may reach fifty years in prison, is still to be set by a lower court.

The same ruling upheld the acquittal of the eight other women tried alongside her, former directors and employees of the now-closed institute. The events took place between 2004-2005 and 2016 and were made public in November 2016. In 2019, two priests had already been sentenced to 42 and 44 years in prison, a gardener to 18 years and a former altar boy to 10 years, for offences reaching as far as the rape of children aged 4 to 17. "For the victims, this is a vindication of truth and justice at an exceptional level," said the lawyer for the plaintiffs.

What tradition teaches

The Lord reserved for crimes against little ones a word without appeal: "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (St Matthew, XVIII, 6). The sin against the sixth commandment is already, the Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches, a defilement that excludes from the kingdom of God; committed by consecrated persons, upon children deprived even of speech to call for help, it adds to impurity both betrayal and sacrilege.

The same tradition teaches that to punish the guilty is not a crime, but an act of justice. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, expounding the fifth commandment, ranks among those who do not break it the civil magistrate to whom the power to punish is entrusted: in chastising the guilty and protecting the innocent, he lawfully exercises his office. The sword of the judge, says the Apostle, is not borne in vain, for he is "God's minister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil" (Romans, XIII, 4).

The measure

Measured by this rule, the Mendoza ruling renders truth its due. A court had first acquitted; a higher court restored the guilt. The justice of men, slow and fallible, here serves the order God has entrusted to it. That the sentence is not yet fixed takes nothing from the verdict: the guilty woman is declared such, and the punishment, which may rise to fifty years, now belongs to the trial court.

The religious habit has never guaranteed the holiness of the one who wears it, and tradition has never confused the Church with the faults of her members. The holiness of the Church rests on her doctrine and her sacraments, not on the impunity of those who profane them. Nothing in the faith we hold requires us to cover the crime; everything, on the contrary, commands us to name it and to let it be judged.

What to take from it

The faithful need not choose between love of the Church and horror at the crime committed in her name. Tradition holds both together: it curses the scandal of the little ones and blesses the justice that punishes it. Before such facts, our part is prayer for the victims, reparation, and an attachment all the firmer to the faith the Church has always taught.

Sources. Gospel according to St Matthew, XVIII, 6, and Epistle to the Romans, XIII, 4 (Douay-Rheims, Vulgate); Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth and sixth commandments.