A copy of the letter was provided to The New York Times by its author, Juan Carlos Cruz, who has accused the Rev. Fernando Karadima, once one of Chile’s most prominent Catholic priests, of abuse.
Source/Credit: The New York Times
By Associated Press | February 5, 2018
Things keep getting worse for Pope Francis.
Late last month, the pope reiterated his defense of a Chilean bishop, contending that he had never received any complaints that the prelate knew of abuse by the country’s most notorious pedophile priest.
But on Monday, The Associated Press reported that the pope personally received an eight-page letter in 2015 from one of the victims. The letter explicitly detailed abuses the victim said were witnessed by other clerics, including Juan Barros Madrid, who was appointed bishop of Osorno, Chile, that year.
The report that one of the pope’s top advisers had personally handed him the letter has revived accusations by advocates for abuse victims that the 81-year-old pontiff cannot, or will not, understand an issue that has long roiled the Roman Catholic Church.
“There is what you might call a willful blindness,” said Peter Saunders, a former member of the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, whose mandate expired in December. “It’s almost angry unwillingness to accept what in front of him, because to acknowledge it is to acknowledge that the church still has to clean up its act. He’s been behaving like a spouse who is told that their spouse is abusing their kids, and can’t believe it.”
A copy of the letter was provided to The New York Times by its author, Juan Carlos Cruz, who has accused the Rev. Fernando Karadima, once one of Chile’s most prominent Catholic priests, of abuse. The church has found Father Karadima guilty of abusing minors from 1980 to 1995 and penalized him in 2011.
In the letter, Mr. Cruz wrote that Bishop Barros, who was a priest at the time, witnessed the abuse.
Pope Francis has repeatedly discounted the accusations against Bishop Barros as slander, and his defense of him cast a shadow over a trip he made to Chile in January. Last week, facing mounting criticism for siding with clergy members over victims, the pope sent the Vatican’s top sex crimes investigator to Chile to hear their accusations.
The disclosure of the letter has raised difficult questions for the pope.
Read original post here: Chile: Victim's sex abuse letter contradicts Pope's claim over 'cover-up'
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