Pope Francis held a crucial summit with Chile’s bishops this week in an attempt to understand the causes of the clerical sexual abuse crisis in their country and the “mechanisms” that led to its cover-up.
The behind-closed-doors meetings in the Vatican involved the Pope, 31 diocesan and auxiliary bishops from Chile, two retired bishops and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
Francis summoned the bishops to Rome after receiving a 2,300- page report on the problems of sexual abuse from the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna. He commissioned the report after his visit to Chile in January, when he defended Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno against accusations from abuse survivors. Juan Carlos Cruz and others said that Barros had witnessed Fr Fernando Karadima abusing him in the 1980s and did nothing about it.
In January, Francis said: “There is not one piece of evidence against him. It is calumny.” But, on 11 April, he admitted to “grave errors” of judgement in the abuse scandal.
The meeting this week resembles one that Pope St John Paul II called in 2002 to address the abuse crisis in the US and another ordered by Pope Benedict XVI eight years later for the Irish hierarchy. This 15-17 May meeting comes after Francis spent several days with abuse survivors in his Casa Santa Marta residence, where he apologised to them and heard their suggestions about what should happen next. Many people now expect some bishops to step down. Cruz was one of the survivors the Pope apologised to.
The Vatican said in a statement that the bishops’ meeting was part of a “long synodal process” to work out the “responsibility of everyone for these devastating wounds”, and to make changes to prevent any repetition of “these reprehensible acts.” After his meeting with Francis, Cruz said the Pope had been “misinformed” about the abuse crisis in Chile. He held Cardinal Francisco Errázuriz Ossa, former Archbishop of Santiago, responsible for this, he added.The cardinal denies the accusation. But, having initially said he would not attend the summit with Francis, he was seen last weekend on a Rome-bound plane.
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