Pope Francis says the cry of sexual abuse victims has “reached heaven” and has promised Chilean Catholics that “never again” will the Church ignore them or cover up their complaints.
In a letter addressed to the “People of God” in Chile, Francis thanked survivors for their courageous perseverance for speaking out, while admitting that it was a matter of “shame” that the Church had failed to listen to them.
The Pope said he now wanted to place the focus on ordinary believers, not as a token gesture but because the crisis requires them to be actively involved in a full scale renewal of the Church.
A Catholic leadership cut off from the people, Francis emphasised, is a “perversion” of ecclesial structures while “every time we try to replace, silence, ignore or downsize to small elites” the Church is left “without a body, and ultimately without life”.
His remarks will have resonance in Chile, where the abuse criss centres around Fr Fernando Karadima, who led the wealthy central Santiago parish of El Bosque. A friend of the country’s former dictator General Augusto Pinochet and lauded by Chile’s upper-classes, he developed a cult following among young people.
This produced a steady stream of priestly vocations who, supported by power brokers in the Vatican, went on to occupy senior positions in the Church. Behind the scenes, however, the celebrity priest was sexually abusing some of his young followers.
When these accusations were brought to their attention by survivors, senior Church officials in Chile turned a blind eye and attempted to publicly discredit the victims. And while Karadima never faced civil justice because of a statute of limitations he was sentenced to a life of prayer an penance by the Vatican in 2011.
Among Karadima’s proteges was Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who has been the lightning rod for current scandal after being accused by survivors of witnessing Karadima’s abuse and doing nothing.
The Pope’s decision to appoint Bishop Juan Barros to lead the Diocese of Osorno in 2015, was met with public outcry with the new bishop having to battle through crowds of protesters during his installation ceremony.
Then, during a visit to the country in January, Francis upset victims by describing claims of a cover-up abasing Barros as “calumny”, sparking an outcry which called into question his handling of the sexual abuse scandal. It also cast a shadow over what should have been a jubilant visit by the first Latin American Pope to a country which neighbours his homeland of Argentina.
The Pope’s letter to Chile’s Catholics was released on Thursday, the same day it was announced he was sending Vatican investigators who conducted an earlier inquiry into clerical sexual abuse in Chile back to the country. This time they will be going to Bishop Barros’ troubled Osorno diocese.
The Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, and Mgr Jordi Bertomeu, an official the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are being sent to the Chilean diocese in the southern part of the country in order to further “the process of reparation and healing of victims of abuse.”
In his 8-page letter the Pope said that now was the time for listening and discernment in order to find solutions for the abuse scandal and while new “strategies” were essential, they were not enough to heal this “painful open wound” and tackle a complex problem.
“The ‘never again’ to a culture of abuse, and the system of cover-up that allowed it to perpetuate, calls on all of us to work toward a culture of carefulness in our relationships,” Francis wrote.
“The whole process of revision and purification that we are living is possible thanks to the effort and perseverance of people who, even against all hopes and amid discredit, have never tired of seeking the truth. I am referring to the victims of sexual abuse, abuse of power and abuse of authority and to those who believed in them and accompanied them at the time. Victims whose cry has reached heaven”.
He added: “I would like once again to thank the perseverance and courage of them all. This recent period of time has been one of listening and discernment to get to the roots that have allowed these atrocities to occur and perpetuate, and to find solutions to the scandal of abuse not with merely strategies – essential but insufficient – but with all the necessary means to be able to tackle the problem in its complexity.”
While Francis initially dismissed accusations against Barros, he performed a volte-face after Archbishop Scicluna, an experienced sex abuse investigator, and Mgr Bertomeu, investigated the crisis and sent him a 2,300-page report.
Afterwards the Pope apologised for making “serious mistakes” while admitting to having received “untruthful and unbalanced information”. The problem of abuse in the country, it was clear to him, went far beyond just the case of Bishop Barros.
He also decided to host three Chilean sex abuse survivors at his home in the Vatican so he could apologise to them personally and hear their recommendations for change. Juan Carlos Cruz, one of the survivors, explained the Pope not only said sorry but admitted that he, Francis, had personally been “part of the problem".
Then, on 18 May, all of Chile’s 34 bishops offered to resign en masse after attending their own meeting with the Pope in the Vatican about the cover-up of sexual abuse in the south American nation.
From Friday 1 June until Sunday 3 June the Pope is once again welcoming Karadima’s victims into his home. These include five priests who suffered from “abuses of power, conscience and sex” along with two priests who have helped the victims and two lay people.
Aged 87 and living in a nursing home, Fr Karadima has always denied any wrongdoing.
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