Pope Francis admits 'grave error' in discrediting Chilean church sexual abuse victims

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Pope Francis admits 'grave error' in discrediting Chilean church sexual abuse victims

Associated Press in Santiago
Wed 11 Apr 2018 22.07 BST

Pope Francis has admitted he made “grave errors” in judgment in a clerical sexual abuse scandal in Chile and invited the abuse victims he had discredited to Rome to beg their forgiveness.

In an extraordinary letter published on Wednesday, Francis also summoned all of Chile’s bishops to the Vatican for an emergency summit in the coming weeks to discuss the scandal, which has badly tarnished his reputation and that of the Chilean church.

The Vatican orders up such emergency visits only on rare occasions, when Vatican intervention is urgently required, such as when the clerical sexual abuse scandal exploded in the United States in 2002.

Francis said the meeting, which comes just a year after the Chilean bishops were last in Rome on a regular visit, would have as its objective “repairing scandal where possible and re-establishing justice”.

Francis blamed a lack of “truthful and balanced information” in his missteps in judging the case of Bishop Juan Barros, a protege of Chile’s most notorious predator priest, the Rev Fernando Karadima. Francis had strongly defended Barros during his January visit to Chile, despite accusations by victims that he witnessed and ignored their abuse.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/11/pope-francis-chile-church-sex-abuse-scandal

[Phoenix61]

1. I'm happy to hear this

I'm not Catholic but I've always liked Pope Francis. I was very disappointed in his backing of Bishop Juan Barros. I'm glad he is taking steps to correct his error.