Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Pope Defrocks 2 Retired Chilean Bishops Over Sexual Abuse of Minors
Pope Francis with President Sebastián Piñera of Chile at the Vatican on Saturday. The Vatican announcement came soon after the pope discussed clerical sexual abuse in Chile with Mr. Piñera.CreditCreditPool photo by Alessandro Bianchi
By Jason Horowitz
Oct. 13, 2018
ROME — Pope Francis on Saturday expelled from the priesthood two retired Chilean bishops accused of abusing minors, and made it clear they had no possibility of appeal.
“The decision was adopted by the pope last Thursday, Oct. 11,” the Vatican said in a statement, “as a consequence of overt acts of abuse against minors.” The decision “does not allow for recourse,” the statement added.
One of the bishops, Francisco Cox, 84, is the archbishop emeritus of the city of La Serena and is in poor health. He has a record of sexually abusing children dating to before his arrival as the bishop of the Chilean diocese of Chillan in 1974. The other is Marco Antonio Ordenes Fernandez, 53, and he has not been seen publicly for years.
The pope’s sentence, the harshest available in church canon law, comes amid a sprawling sexual abuse scandal and growing doubts about whether Francis will hold bishops accountable for covering up abuse.
It was handed down a day after the pope reluctantly accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, one of the most powerful men in the American church. But in that case, Francis praised Cardinal Wuerl as putting the good of the church before himself, kept him on as a caretaker until his replacement was selected and let him keep his influential Vatican offices.
The accusations against Cardinal Wuerl, until recently considered one of the church’s strongest advocates for the abused, were linked to his time as the bishop of Pittsburgh and were included in a Pennsylvania grand jury report that documented widespread abuse over decades. The allegations, which Cardinal Wuerl has disputed, had to do with his suspected mismanagement of abusive priests.
The Chilean bishops defrocked on Saturday were accused of sexual abuse, and their punishments were announced by the Vatican soon after the pope discussed the problem of clerical sexual abuse in Chile with President Sebastián Piñera.
The two bishops had been under a cloud of suspicion for years. Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean abuse survivor who has discussed his ordeal personally with Francis, said on Twitter in Spanish that their defrocking was “a wonderful day for survivors of these monsters.”
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Chile police raid Catholic church HQ in sex abuse investigation
Marist Brothers accused of dozens of cases of abuse
‘The impunity of the Chilean hierarchy has ended’
Associated Press
Tue 14 Aug 2018 13.20 EDTLast modified on Tue 14 Aug 2018 14.28 EDT
Chilean authorities have raided the headquarters of the Catholic church’s Episcopal Conference as part of a widespread investigation into sex abuse committed by members of the Marist Brothers order, prosecutors said.
The raid by investigating prosecutors and Chile’s equivalent of the FBI took place at one of the most important buildings of the Chilean church in the capital, Santiago. Prosecutor Raul Guzmán, who confirmed the raid, is investigating more than 35 accusations of abuse committed against former students at schools run by the Marists, who are religious brothers, not priests.
“The impunity of the Chilean hierarchy has ended. In Chile, we’re seeing what happens when the Catholic church is treated as an ordinary corporate citizen,” said Anne Barrett Doyle of the online abuse database BishopAccountability.org.
“Prosecutors in Chile have raised the bar for civil authorities in other countries. The children of Chile will be safer, survivors more likely to find justice, and the church ultimately stronger.”
Church authorities had no immediate response to requests for comment.
Saturday, June 16, 2018
Chilean police conduct surprise raid on Catholic Church offices amid investigation on child sexual abuse
15 June, 2018
(Reuters/Rodrigo Garrido) Special Vatican envoys archbishop Charles Scicluna and father Jordi Bertomeu attend a news conference in Santiago, Chile June 12, 2018.
Two separate offices of the Catholic Church in Chile have been raided by police and prosecutors on Wednesday as part of the investigation on allegations of child sexual abuse by priests.
According to the Associated Press, Chilean authorities have seized investigative reports and church documents related to the sex abuse allegations during the raids on the headquarters of the Ecclesiastical Court in Santiago and the bishop's office in Rancagua in the O'Higgins region.
Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, the archbishop of Santiago, vowed to cooperate with the authorities and said that church officials have provided all the documents requested by the prosecutor.
Jaime Ortiz de Lazcano, the Archbishop of Santiago's legal advisor, said that he was in a meeting with a Vatican envoy when he was asked to appear in court regarding the seizure of documents related to a probe on child sexual abuse.
"I was very surprised when they told me 'Father, go to the court because there's going to be a raid,'" Lazcano told reporters, according to Reuters.
"It's not common that (prosecutors) solicit information from a canonical investigation, but we are entirely willing to cooperate," he added.
The Vatican envoy, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, stressed that it was "very important" for the Church to work with the government in protecting the victims of sexual abuse.
"The canonical process should in no way impede the right of people to exercise their right to civil justice," he said in a news conference in Santiago, as reported by Reuters.
Prosecutor Emiliano Arias insisted that the investigation is focused on "individuals working for the Catholic Church, not the Catholic Church itself."
Last month, the bishop of Rancagua suspended 14 priests following accusations of "improper conduct."
Local media have reported that Chilean prosecutors have already asked the Vatican for information about priests and church workers accused of sexual abuse.
On Monday, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has accepted the resignations of three bishops in relation to the sexual abuse scandals.
Around 30 active Chilean bishops have submitted their resignation last month over their failure to protect children from abusive priests.
Scicluna and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu have traveled to Chile to take statements from abuse victims. The two church officials have recently submitted a 2,300-page report that prompted Francis to acknowledge that he had misjudged the situation in Chile.
According to the BBC, as many as 80 priests have been reported to the authorities for sexual abuse in the past 18 years.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Thursday, May 10, 2018
'Pope Cannot Claim He Was Misinformed': Chilean Abuse Survivor After Vatican Meeting
May 10, 20185:02 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
ALEX LEFF
Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of sexual abuse by a Chilean predator priest, met with Pope Francis recently at the Vatican.Andres Kudacki/AP
In January, Pope Francis traveled to South America to spread peace and hope. Many cheered him on, but he also wound up causing emotional pain when he dismissed accusations that Chilean clergy had covered up sexual abuse.
In the weeks that followed, the Vatican's leading sex crimes investigator looked into the allegations, and the pope did an about-face: He acknowledged making mistakes.
Now, Francis has been apologizing and listening to some of those he offended most.
Last month, three men who had been molested by a Chilean priest in their youth were invited to the Vatican by Francis so he could speak with them personally and ask their forgiveness.
One of the Chilean abuse survivors, Juan Carlos Cruz, now a communications professional in Philadelphia, describes how moving the experience was for him.
"He said, 'Juan Carlos, the first thing I want to do is apologize for what happened to you and apologize in the name of the pope, and in the name of the universal church,' " Cruz says in an interview on Morning Edition. "Of course it was very emotional."
"The pope in January called me a liar"
Monday, April 30, 2018
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Pope admits 'grave errors' in handling Chilean sex abuse scandal
By TOM KINGTON
APR 11, 2018 | 3:40 PM
PopeFrancis leads the Mass for the meeting of the missionaries of mercy in St. Peters basilica at the Vatican on Tuesday. (Vincenzo Pinto / AFP/Getty Images)
Pope Francis has admitted he made "serious errors of judgment" in his handling of a sex abuse case in Chile, telling Chilean bishops that he feels both pain and shame for victims and will beg their forgiveness in person.
Francis' letter marks a dramatic reversal in his handling of accusations that Chilean Bishop Juan Barros witnessed and covered up the sexual abuse of minors by Chilean prelate Fernando Karadima, who was removed from the ministry in 2011 and sentenced to a lifetime of penance by the Vatican.
Francis promoted Barros to bishop in 2015 and described his accusers as "lefties," stirring outrage among Chilean Catholics who staged noisy protests when the pope visited the country in January. Several churches were firebombed during the visit.
After hugging Barros publicly during the visit, Francis called the accusations "slander" and said "I can't condemn [Barros] because I don't have evidence," adding, "But I'm also convinced that he's innocent."
On his return from Chile however, he appeared to have doubts, sending archbishop Charles Scicluna, an experienced Vatican abuse investigator, to interview 64 witnesses. Last month, Scicluna handed the pope a 2,300-page report.
Pope Francis has admitted he made "serious errors of judgment" in his handling of a sex abuse case in Chile, telling Chilean bishops that he feels both pain and shame for victims and will beg their forgiveness in person.
Francis' letter marks a dramatic reversal in his handling of accusations that Chilean Bishop Juan Barros witnessed and covered up the sexual abuse of minors by Chilean prelate Fernando Karadima, who was removed from the ministry in 2011 and sentenced to a lifetime of penance by the Vatican.
Francis promoted Barros to bishop in 2015 and described his accusers as "lefties," stirring outrage among Chilean Catholics who staged noisy protests when the pope visited the country in January. Several churches were firebombed during the visit.
After hugging Barros publicly during the visit, Francis called the accusations "slander" and said "I can't condemn [Barros] because I don't have evidence," adding, "But I'm also convinced that he's innocent."
On his return from Chile however, he appeared to have doubts, sending archbishop Charles Scicluna, an experienced Vatican abuse investigator, to interview 64 witnesses. Last month, Scicluna handed the pope a 2,300-page report.
Friday, February 16, 2018
Vatican investigator to meet with Chile abuse victim in NYC
By Associated Press
February 17, 2018 | 12:22am
Juan Carlos Cruz
AP
A Vatican sex-crimes investigator is meeting in New York with one of the key victims in the Chilean abuse scandal.
Saturday’s meeting between Archbishop Charles Scicluna and whistleblower Juan Carlos Cruz will take place at a Roman Catholic church in Manhattan.
Scicluna is investigating accusations against Bishop Juan Barros, a protege of Chile’s most notorious predator priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima.
Cruz and two others have said Barros witnessed the abuse Karadima inflicted on them and ignored it. Barros has denied seeing or knowing of any abuse.
The scandal has tarred the reputation of Pope Francis. Francis angered many when he appointed Barros a bishop in 2015.
A Vatican sex-crimes investigator is meeting in New York with one of the key victims in the Chilean abuse scandal.
Saturday’s meeting between Archbishop Charles Scicluna and whistleblower Juan Carlos Cruz will take place at a Roman Catholic church in Manhattan.
Scicluna is investigating accusations against Bishop Juan Barros, a protege of Chile’s most notorious predator priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima.
Cruz and two others have said Barros witnessed the abuse Karadima inflicted on them and ignored it. Barros has denied seeing or knowing of any abuse.
The scandal has tarred the reputation of Pope Francis. Francis angered many when he appointed Barros a bishop in 2015.
Monday, February 05, 2018
AP: Victim’s Letter Suggests Pope Francis Knew of Abusive Chilean Priest in 2015
1. SO HE KNEW?
5 hours ago
REUTERS/MAX ROSSI
Pope Francis had received a victim’s letter in 2015 detailing “how a priest sexually abused him and how other Chilean clergy ignored it,” the Associated Press reported Monday. The letter contradicts the pope’s claims that no victims had come forward to denounce the coverup of Chilean Rev. Fernando Karadima by Bishop Juan Barros—who is accused of ignoring Karadima’s abuses. In his recent South America trip, the pope called the accusations against Barros “slander,” and told an AP reporter that he knew of no victims because “they haven’t come forward.” The letter that directly contradicts the pope’s claim had reportedly been successfully delivered to the pontiff, and brings into question the religious leader’s supposed “no tolerance” policy on sexual abuse and subsequent coverups.
Saturday, February 03, 2018
Pope’s briefing system under scrutiny after gaffe in Chile
Francis has created his own informal, parallel information structure outside the Vatican.
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — Just how well informed is Pope Francis about the goings-on in his 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church?
VATICAN CITY — Just how well informed is Pope Francis about the goings-on in his 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church?
Pope Francis waves as he leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Wednesday.
That question is making the rounds after the pope seemed completely unaware of the details of a Chilean sex abuse scandal, a failure that soured his recent trip there and forced him to do an about-face. It also came up after his abrupt, no-explanation-given dismissal of a respected Vatican bank manager.
And it rose to the fore when he was accused by a cardinal of not realizing that his own diplomats were “selling out” the underground Catholic Church in China for the sake of political expediency.
Some Vatican observers now wonder whether Francis is getting enough of the high-quality briefings befitting a world leader, or whether he is relying more on instinct and his own network of informants who slip him information on the side.
In his five years as pope, Francis has created an informal, parallel information structure that often rubs up against official Vatican channels. That includes a papal kitchen cabinet of nine cardinal advisers who meet every three months at the Vatican and have the pope’s ear, plus the regular briefings he receives from the top Vatican brass.
The Vatican this week issued a remarkable defense of Francis’ information flow and his grasp of the delicate China dossier. The Holy See press office insisted that Francis followed the China negotiations closely, was being “faithfully” briefed by his advisers and was in complete agreement with his secretary of state on the topic.
“It is therefore surprising and regrettable that the contrary is affirmed by people in the church, thus fostering confusion and controversy,” said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke.
Such an affirmation would seem unnecessary given popes usually are surrounded only by their top official advisers. But Francis lives at the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel rather than the Apostolic Palace, where he can more easily keep his door open at all hours, and where a network of friends, informants and advisers provide back channels of information to him.
And it rose to the fore when he was accused by a cardinal of not realizing that his own diplomats were “selling out” the underground Catholic Church in China for the sake of political expediency.
Some Vatican observers now wonder whether Francis is getting enough of the high-quality briefings befitting a world leader, or whether he is relying more on instinct and his own network of informants who slip him information on the side.
In his five years as pope, Francis has created an informal, parallel information structure that often rubs up against official Vatican channels. That includes a papal kitchen cabinet of nine cardinal advisers who meet every three months at the Vatican and have the pope’s ear, plus the regular briefings he receives from the top Vatican brass.
The Vatican this week issued a remarkable defense of Francis’ information flow and his grasp of the delicate China dossier. The Holy See press office insisted that Francis followed the China negotiations closely, was being “faithfully” briefed by his advisers and was in complete agreement with his secretary of state on the topic.
“It is therefore surprising and regrettable that the contrary is affirmed by people in the church, thus fostering confusion and controversy,” said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke.
Such an affirmation would seem unnecessary given popes usually are surrounded only by their top official advisers. But Francis lives at the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel rather than the Apostolic Palace, where he can more easily keep his door open at all hours, and where a network of friends, informants and advisers provide back channels of information to him.
Monday, January 22, 2018
Michael Abrahams | Pope Francis’ hypocrisy
Published:Monday | January 22, 2018 | 12:52 AM
Michael Abrahams
Abrahams
Father Fernando Karadima appeared to be a really cool guy. A very popular figure in Chile, he was a spiritual leader and father figure for many young men in Santiago, the nation’s capital. Based in the parish Parroquia El Bosque, he mingled with the rich and famous, including some of the city’s most influential families. According to The New York Times, “Impeccably dressed and with perfectly groomed nails and slicked-back hair, Father Karadima cut an aristocratic figure, appealing to both young and old in Chile's elite.”
But there was a dark and sinister side to Karadima. In 1984, a group of parishioners filed a report about his improper conduct to Archbishop Juan Francisco Fresno, but, according to a court statement by one of the parishioners, the letter was “torn up and thrown away”.
In 2003, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa was informed by parishioner José Murillo about Karadima’s alleged abuses. However, the cardinal’s response was to tell Murillo that he was praying for him. No investigation was opened. It was not until 2004, twenty years after the first reports were made, that the first investigation into Karadima’s perverted activities was opened by the Catholic Church. Two years later, the investigator stated that he found "the accusers to be credible” and suggested that action be taken. Unfortunately, the cardinal stopped the investigation for more than three years, claiming to be waiting for more evidence and because he thought the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations.
In April 2010, a civil criminal complaint was filed by four men who claimed to have been abused by Karadima. But after seven months of conducting the probe, the claims were dismissed by the court, ruling that there was not enough evidence to charge him. The accusers’ lawyer, Juan Pablo Hermosilla, claimed that the state prosecutor had gathered testimony from dozens of witnesses that “established a pattern of decades of abusive behaviour”, but that the judge, Leonardo Valdivieso, never gave the parties access to the investigation report until the day he closed the case, and withheld testimony and other evidence that could have advanced it.
The judge also dismissed the case without having Father Karadima face his accusers, as they had requested, after defence lawyers presented the court with medical certificates asserting that the priest could have a heart attack if forced to do so.
Finally, in 2011, after several years of a Catholic canonical investigation, the Vatican found Karadima guilty of sexually and psychologically abusing minors and sent him to retire to a "life of prayer and penitence" and to "lifelong prohibition from the public exercise of any ministerial act, particularly confession and the spiritual guidance of any category of persons”.
Karadima had trained 50 priests and four bishops. One of those bishops, Juan Barros Madrid, who moved in his inner circle, figured prominently in the scandal, as victims of abuse claimed that he knew about Karadima’s abusive behaviour, but did nothing about it. One victim claimed that Bishop Barros even witnessed him being abused.
Pope Francis had vowed to take abuse of children by clergy seriously, even setting up a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2014. Last week, while visiting Chile, Francis expressed “pain and shame” over the abuse scandal and begged for victims’ forgiveness, meeting and weeping with survivors of abuse.
However, he revealed his true colours when he made statements in support of Barros. In an about-turn, Francis strongly defended him, saying, “The day someone brings me proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. But there is not one single piece of evidence. It is all calumny! Is that clear?”
Abrahams
Father Fernando Karadima appeared to be a really cool guy. A very popular figure in Chile, he was a spiritual leader and father figure for many young men in Santiago, the nation’s capital. Based in the parish Parroquia El Bosque, he mingled with the rich and famous, including some of the city’s most influential families. According to The New York Times, “Impeccably dressed and with perfectly groomed nails and slicked-back hair, Father Karadima cut an aristocratic figure, appealing to both young and old in Chile's elite.”
But there was a dark and sinister side to Karadima. In 1984, a group of parishioners filed a report about his improper conduct to Archbishop Juan Francisco Fresno, but, according to a court statement by one of the parishioners, the letter was “torn up and thrown away”.
In 2003, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa was informed by parishioner José Murillo about Karadima’s alleged abuses. However, the cardinal’s response was to tell Murillo that he was praying for him. No investigation was opened. It was not until 2004, twenty years after the first reports were made, that the first investigation into Karadima’s perverted activities was opened by the Catholic Church. Two years later, the investigator stated that he found "the accusers to be credible” and suggested that action be taken. Unfortunately, the cardinal stopped the investigation for more than three years, claiming to be waiting for more evidence and because he thought the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations.
In April 2010, a civil criminal complaint was filed by four men who claimed to have been abused by Karadima. But after seven months of conducting the probe, the claims were dismissed by the court, ruling that there was not enough evidence to charge him. The accusers’ lawyer, Juan Pablo Hermosilla, claimed that the state prosecutor had gathered testimony from dozens of witnesses that “established a pattern of decades of abusive behaviour”, but that the judge, Leonardo Valdivieso, never gave the parties access to the investigation report until the day he closed the case, and withheld testimony and other evidence that could have advanced it.
The judge also dismissed the case without having Father Karadima face his accusers, as they had requested, after defence lawyers presented the court with medical certificates asserting that the priest could have a heart attack if forced to do so.
Finally, in 2011, after several years of a Catholic canonical investigation, the Vatican found Karadima guilty of sexually and psychologically abusing minors and sent him to retire to a "life of prayer and penitence" and to "lifelong prohibition from the public exercise of any ministerial act, particularly confession and the spiritual guidance of any category of persons”.
Karadima had trained 50 priests and four bishops. One of those bishops, Juan Barros Madrid, who moved in his inner circle, figured prominently in the scandal, as victims of abuse claimed that he knew about Karadima’s abusive behaviour, but did nothing about it. One victim claimed that Bishop Barros even witnessed him being abused.
Pope Francis had vowed to take abuse of children by clergy seriously, even setting up a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2014. Last week, while visiting Chile, Francis expressed “pain and shame” over the abuse scandal and begged for victims’ forgiveness, meeting and weeping with survivors of abuse.
However, he revealed his true colours when he made statements in support of Barros. In an about-turn, Francis strongly defended him, saying, “The day someone brings me proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. But there is not one single piece of evidence. It is all calumny! Is that clear?”
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Key cardinal distances himself from pope abuse comment
by Reuters
Saturday, 20 January 2018 18:20 GM
By Philip Pullella and Caroline Stauffer
TRUJILLO, Peru, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A key U.S. cardinal distanced himself on Saturday from comments on sex abuse by Pope Francis, a remarkable move that appeared to underscore divisions in the Catholic Church over how to treat accusations.
Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston said in a statement "it is understandable" that comments made by the pope in Chile on Thursday were "a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy or any other perpetrator."
In response to a question from a reporter on accusations against Juan Barros, a Chilean bishop appointed by the pope in 2015 who is accused of protecting a pedophile, the pope said:
"The day I see proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. There is not a single piece of evidence against him. It is all slander. Is that clear?"
The pope's comments appearing to dismiss the credibility of accusers was widely criticised by victims, their advocates and editorials in Chile and the pope's native Argentina.
Barros has been accused of protecting his former mentor, Father Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty in a Vatican investigation in 2011 of abusing teenage boys over many years. He denies the allegations and Barros said he was unaware of any wrongdoing. The Barros-Karadima case has riveted Chile for years.
O'Malley's statement on the pope's choice of language said: "Words that convey the message 'if you cannot prove your claims then you will not be believed' abandon those who have suffered reprehensible criminal violations of their human dignity and relegate survivors to discredited exile."
Friday, January 19, 2018
Pope Francis accuses clerical abuse victims of slandering bishop
Pontiff enrages Chilean victims of paedophile priest, saying claims of cover up are ‘all calumny’
about 4 hours ago
Pope Francis ‘has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis’, says campaigner Anne Barrett Doyle. Photograph: Mario Ruiz/EPA
Pope Francis has accused victims of Chile’s most notorious paedophile of slander, in an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic Church its credibility in the country.
Francis said that until he sees proof that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in covering up the sex crimes of the Reverend Fernando Karadima, such accusations against the bishop are “all calumny”.
The pope’s remarks drew shock from Chileans and immediate rebuke from victims and their advocates. They noted the accusers were deemed credible enough by the Vatican that it sentenced Karadima to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for his crimes in 2011.
A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes was not lacking.
“As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all,” tweeted Bishop Barros’s most vocal accuser, Juan Carlos Cruz.
Truly crazy
“These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty.”
The Karadima scandal dominated Francis’s visit to Chile and the overall issue of sex abuse and church cover-up was likely to factor into his three-day trip to Peru that began late on Thursday.
Karadima’s victims reported to church authorities as early as 2002 that he would kiss and fondle them in the Santiago parish he ran, but officials refused to believe them.
Only when the victims went public with their accusations in 2010 did the Vatican launch an investigation that led to Karadima being removed from ministry.
Francis had sought to heal the wounds by meeting this week with abuse victims and begging forgiveness for the crimes of church pastors. But on Thursday, he struck a defiant tone when asked by a Chilean journalist about Mr Barros.
“The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,” Francis said. “There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”
Anne Barrett Doyle, of the online database BishopAccountability.org, said it was “sad and wrong” for the pope to discredit the victims since “the burden of proof here rests with the church, not the victims – and especially not with victims whose veracity has already been affirmed.
“He has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis,” she said in a statement. “Who knows how many victims now will decide to stay hidden, for fear they will not be believed?”
Claims
Indeed, Catholic officials for years accused victims of slandering and attacking the church with their claims. But up until the pope’s words on Thursday, many in the church and Vatican had come to reluctantly acknowledge that victims usually told the truth and that the church for decades had wrongly sought to protect its own.
German Silva, a political scientist at Santiago’s Universidad Mayor, said the pope’s comments were a “tremendous error” that will reverberate in Chile and beyond.
Patricio Navia, political science professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, said Francis had gone much further than Chilean bishops in acknowledging the sexual abuse scandal, which many Chileans appreciated.
“Then right before leaving, Francis turns around and says: ‘By the way, I don’t think Barros is guilty. Show me some proof’,” Mr Navia said, adding that the comment will probably erase any goodwill the pope had won over the issue.
– PA
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
A Very Creepy Sex Cult Scandal Greets the Pope
DEVILS
BARBIE LATZA NADEAU
01.15.18 1:21 PM ET
ROME—What is a boy to do when his spiritual mentor, part of a group that claims it is leading young people on the path of Christ, says that God, working in mysterious ways, wants him to fondle and be fondled, to lie naked with grown men, to be sodomized? Too often and for too long in too many parts of the world, those experiences have been kept as guilty secrets, not by the perpetrators but by the victims.
“I thought I had been selected by the devil to provide sexual services to this man,” as one of those boys explained to investigators.
Only when the press has documented the cases has action been taken to expose some of the perpetrators, although far from all of them.
Such is the situation in Peru and Chile, where Pope Francis is paying a visit this week. However beneficent his reputation, the sordid past of such men and institutions keeps coming back to afflict his papacy like a recurrent, debilitating disease.
Luis Fernando Figari, the 70-year-old founder of Peru’s conservative Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) Catholic movement used psychological manipulation and sexual torture on young members of his Catholic organization, according to his victims. He and three other men stand accused, though not yet officially charged by Peruvian authorities, of sexually and psychologically assaulting dozens of little boys and young men throughout the ’90s and early 2000s by threatening them with the wrath of God if they didn’t succumb to their wanton pleasures of the flesh.
One of the alleged perpetrators, Jeffrey Daniels Valderrama, now lives in Chicago, where he has told authorities he is innocent of the Peruvian allegations, according to the Chicago Tribune.
One of Daniels Valderrama’s alleged victims, Alvaro Urbina, interviewed by the Tribune, said he had been taken to SCV to escape bullying in school when Daniels gave him attention that soon turned sexual. “I was a child. I didn’t know what I was doing or what I wanted. These are scars that I’ll carry for years,” he told the Tribune in December. “It’s a pain I’m going to carry in my heart forever.”
The reported abuses of SCV founder Figari are remarkably similar to those lodged against the late Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, who founded the Legion of Christ in the 1940s and used it as a pool from which those in charge could recruit young victims for sex acts that often included oral and anal abuse. Maciel Degollado did not limit himself to little boys. While serving as a supposedly celibate priest, he also fathered several children, at least one of whom he later abused.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Chile churches attacked before Pope Francis visit
12 January 2018
EPA
A flyer left at this church said the next bomb would be in Pope Francis's robe
Several churches in Chile have been attacked or vandalised ahead of a visit by Pope Francis next week.
Three churches in the capital Santiago were damaged by firebombs. Some flyers left behind warned that the next one was for the Pope.
But at another church south of the capital, a pamphlet used a phrase that refers to activism in the indigenous Mapuche territory.
President Michelle Bachelet described the incidents as "very strange".
"In a democracy, people can express themselves as long as they do it in a peaceful way," she told a radio station on Friday, adding that the attacks could not yet be tied to a particular group.
No one has been arrested for the attacks, which caused no injuries. The Vatican is yet to comment.
Thursday, April 03, 2014
Recent earthquakes in Chile, Panama, California likely not related, experts say
7:58 PM, April 2, 2014
Chileans return home to survey damage after earthquake: After being evacuated from low-lying coastal areas, Chileans in the north return home to survey damage after Tuesday's magnitude 8.2 earthquake. Nathan Frandino reports.
Chileans return home to survey damage after earthq...
Magnitude 5.1 earthquake strikes Los Angeles
By Doyle Rice
USA TODAY
An 8.2-magnitude earthquake hit Chile late Tuesday, killing at least six people and generating tsunami waves that might ripple as far as Indonesia.
People walk along a cracked road in Iquique, northern Chile, on April 2, 2014 a day after a powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake hit off Chile's Pacific coast. An 8.2-magnitude earthquake hit Chile late Tuesday, killing at least six people and generating tsunami waves that might ripple as far as Indonesia. / Aldo Solimano/AFP/Getty Images
Recent earthquakes in Chile, Panama and Southern California have people wondering. … Are they related?
Expert say it’s unlikely. “The odds are overwhelming that they’re not related,” said John Vidale, a seismologist with the University of Washington-Seattle, about the deadly magnitude-8.2 quake near Chile late Tuesday and the magnitude-5.8 quake near Panama on Wednesday.
The two quakes are too far apart -- more than 2,000 miles -- to be connected with each other, he said.
“There’s no way that last month’s Los Angeles quakes were related” to the ones this week in Central and South America, he said.
What all the quakes do share in common is their location along the notorious “Ring of Fire,” the world’s greatest earthquake belt, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Also known as the “circum-Pacific seismic belt,” the ring is found along the rim of the Pacific Ocean from New Zealand to Chile. It’s where 81% of the world’s largest earthquakes occur. This includes the catastrophic quake and resulting tsunami in Japan that killed thousands of people in 2011.
“There is no evidence of linkages in activity between different regions around the Ring of Fire,” said Robert Muir-Wood, a scientist with RMS, a catastrophe modeling firm.
The quakes also are probably not harbingers of a bigger one to come. “Most quakes have about a 5% chance of being followed by a bigger quake, most of the time just a little bigger,” Vidale said.
Chances of a bigger quake in these areas do not reach alarming levels, he said, “with the exception of Chile, where even aftershocks could be damaging and a bigger earthquake might be catastrophic.”
The 8.2 quake near Chile Tuesday evening was unusually strong, Vidale said.
“This earthquake is of a size that happens somewhere about once a year,” Muir-Wood said. “The location is no particular surprise -- the Chile subduction zone is the world’s most active, and northern Chile has not seen really big subduction zone earthquakes for some decades, unlike southern Chile.”
A subduction zone is a place where two plates of the Earth’s crust come together, one riding over the other.
Chile is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries because the Nazca tectonic plate just off the coast in the Pacific Ocean plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the towering Andes mountains to ever-higher elevation. Nowhere along this fault is the pressure greater than in far northern Chile.
Despite the recent spate of quakes, Muir-Wood said, “activity overall has been quieter since 2011.” Worldwide, there are roughly 4,000 earthquakes each day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, most small and undetectable.
The quakes in the Los Angeles area last month were not that strong. “California has gone for an unusually long period without a significant earthquake loss,” Muir-Wood said.
On average, Southern California gets about 10,000 earthquakes each year, many too small to be felt, according to the USGS. That’s more than 27 a day.
Contributing: Associated Press
Source
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)