Over the past months, we have addressed painful and urgent issues: child abuse in Christian contexts and spiritual abuse exercised from pulpits, families, and religious institutions. These topics expose a deep reality: the church does not know how to accompany victims and, far too often, ends up intensifying their pain. 

But this pastoral incapacity does not originate in the pulpit; it is born in the seminary.

This new series responds to a pastoral, theological, and ethical necessity: to examine why so many ministers graduate from seminaries without the tools to accompany victims—without trauma literacy, without a gender perspective, without an ethic of care, without sensitivity to domestic violence, and without preparation to address complex psychological dynamics that destroy lives.

This series will explore:

• The structural absence of abuse as a topic in pastoral formation.
• The curriculum that is never taught, but that churches desperately need.
• The real consequences of this silence in congregations, families, and among leaders.
• Proposals for a pastoral curriculum that integrates trauma, justice, gender, and healing spirituality.
• Urgent reforms needed to create a compassionate pastoral practice in our Latin American communities.

It is a call to responsibility and transformation.
A call to pastoral conversion.
A call to heal the root, not just the branches.

“Formed without tools: the pastoral void in the face of abuse”

María had been in a marriage marked by episodes of verbal humiliation, occasional pushing, and constant economic control for eight years. After a particularly painful incident in which her husband broke her phone to prevent her from contacting her family, María decided to seek help from her church. She approached the pastor who had witnessed her spiritual growth and in whom she deeply trusted.

The pastor listened to her, but after a few minutes replied: “All marriages go through trials. Sometimes God uses these difficulties to shape our character. I encourage you to pray more, be patient, and avoid provoking him. He is the head of the household; if you submit with love, the situation will calm down.”

María left that conversation confused and ashamed. She felt that her suffering had been spiritually invalidated and that she was being asked for a form of obedience that bordered on the denial of her dignity. Out of fear of “failing God,” she followed the pastor’s advice and returned home without seeking further help. The following weeks were worse. Her husband interpreted her silence—a result of pastoral counsel—as a sign that he could intensify control without consequences. The violence escalated: he began checking her emails, forbade her from attending women’s meetings, and on several occasions woke her in the middle of the night to interrogate her for hours.

Finally, after an episode of physical aggression, a neighbor called the police. María was taken to a shelter. When the pastor learned of this, he expressed surprise:
“But she never told me it was that serious.” He failed to recognize that his misguided counsel—based on a distorted interpretation of biblical texts on “submission”—had contributed, albeit unintentionally, to the deterioration of the situation.

The Latin American church faces a profound crisis: its leaders are not prepared to support victims of abuse. This void is not accidental; it is the direct result of the pastoral formation they receive. Most seminaries teach how to preach, how to administer a church, how to interpret ancient texts—but they do not teach how to care for those who live with violence, trauma, or abuse within their homes and congregations. This formative omission carries a devastating human cost.

Many ministers—well-intentioned but unprepared—reproduce harmful practices: they minimize reports, ask for “more prayer,” recommend “immediate forgiveness,” or advise remaining in violent relationships. They do so because they were never trained otherwise. As Ivone Gebara warns, all theology is contextual; when formation is constructed from privilege, it fails to recognize the suffering bodies that constitute the reality of Latin American churches¹.

The disconnection between theology and suffering reveals a formative structure centered on concepts rather than people. Leonardo Boff has forcefully stated that care is the foundation of all ethics, and that without care, spirituality becomes abstract and dangerous². The absence of care in seminaries not only limits pastoral understanding; it renders it potentially violent. Jon Sobrino goes further: theology must begin with the “principle of mercy,” with the suffering of the people, not with the comfort of those who interpret Scripture from behind a desk³. When seminaries form leaders without deep contact with the reality of suffering, they produce superficial forms of pastoral care that wound instead of healing.

Why do seminaries remain silent? There are structural reasons: theological patriarchy that determines which topics are deemed “worthy” of study and which are not, as Marcela Lagarde denounces⁴. There are economic reasons: avoiding discomfort among leaders or donors. But there are also theological reasons: literal readings of texts on submission, hierarchical visions of male leadership, and the spiritualization of suffering as a divine test. The result is a pastoral practice incapable of recognizing dynamics of power, manipulation, fear, or coercion within families and communities.

The consequences for victims are severe. They receive spiritually harmful counsel, are re-victimized through spiritual manipulation, lose their community, and often their faith. When trauma meets an unprepared pastor, the result is frequently a spiritual wound deeper than the physical or emotional one. The victim hears: “Pray more,” “you must forgive,” “don’t destroy your marriage.” Hidden within these messages is a theology that justifies violence.

But it does not have to be this way. Seminaries can—and must—change. All pastoral formation should include trauma literacy, a gender perspective, an ethic of care, an understanding of abuse dynamics, interdisciplinary engagement, and clear protocols for supporting victims. Existing theological traditions must be integrated: Boff’s ethic of care, Sobrino’s incarnated mercy, Latin American feminist critique, and liberation pedagogies. Pastoral ministry is not merely discourse; it is care, presence, discernment, and justice.

Silence is a form of violence. Training pastors without theological, pastoral, and ethical tools perpetuates harm. For this reason, this series emerges as a prophetic invitation: to reform pastoral formation to heal our communities. Next week we will explore: “What pastoral formation does not teach—and what could have saved lives.”

References

1. Ivone Gebara, Teología ecofeminista (selección).
2. Leonardo Boff, Ética y moral, 45–52.
3. Jon Sobrino, El principio misericordia, 12–18.
4. Marcela Lagarde, Los cautiverios de las mujeres, 20–33.