A long-running investigation by Spanish newspaper El País has identified more than 3,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse within the Spanish Catholic Church, up from just 34 officially recognised cases when the probe began in 2018. The paper's sixth report on the subject names 1,613 accused clergy and lay workers — representing approximately 1.46% of the 110,000 priests and religious figures active in Spain since 1940 — and has been submitted to the Vatican, Spain's Episcopal Conference, and the national Ombudsman. The findings carry added urgency as Pope León XIV is due to visit Spain on 6 June, with the Church having largely failed to respond to five previous El País dossiers detailing hundreds of individual testimonies. Separately, the newspaper has delivered a first-ever report on Latin American cases to the Vatican, documenting 21 testimonies against 24 accused individuals across eight countries, with Colombia accounting for more than half the cases.