VATICAN CITY
ABC News
VATICAN CITY — Apr 15, 2015
Associated Press
The issue of holding bishops accountable for failing to protect children from sexual deviants arrived squarely on Pope Francis’ agenda Wednesday as his point-man on sex abuse raised the case of a controversial bishop appointment in Chile.
The head of the pope’s sex abuse advisory board, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, urged the pope and his other cardinal advisers to take up bishops’ responsibility to protect children — and the need to punish them when they fail to do so — during one of their periodic meetings Wednesday.
The Vatican said O’Malley’s aim was to “come up with appropriate procedures and modalities to evaluate and adjudicate cases of ‘abuse of office’ in this area, especially by people in positions of responsibility within the church.”
O’Malley tabled the agenda item at the request of four members of the advisory board who traveled to Rome over the weekend for an emergency meeting with O’Malley over the appointment of Bishop Juan Barros in Osorno, Chile.
Victims of Chile’s most notorious abuser, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, say Barros witnessed their abuse decades ago and did nothing, and then defended Karadima against their claims when they came forward later. They say that makes him unfit to lead a diocese where he’d be responsible for protecting kids.
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