KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
January 8, 2018
By Joshua J. McElwee
This article appears in the Francis in Chile and Peru feature series. View the full series.
Pope Francis’ most recent foreign trips have seen him tackle some of the world’s most difficult geopolitical issues. In September, he traveled to Colombia to back an unpopular peace deal with guerilla militants. In November, he went to Myanmar to focus global attention on the government’s persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Now, the pope is preparing to embark on a trip to Chile and Peru that may shift the focus from politics to problems inside the church community.
Local observers and prominent expatriate voices say attention during the Jan. 15-21 visit may center on how Francis can help the Chilean church regain trustworthiness after a recent spate of cases of clergy sexual abuse.
Complicating that possibility, the observers say, is Francis’ own record on the abuse issue, especially his 2015 appointment of Bishop Juan Barros Madrid of Osorno, Chile. Barros has been accused of covering up abuse by a prominent priest in the 1980s and ’90s.
Mario Paredes, who has advised both the Vatican and the U.S. bishops on Latin American issues for decades, told NCR he hoped the pope could help Chile’s hierarchy “restore credibility that in recent years it has lost.”
“No matter how you look at it, those cases have been horrendous, scandalous, and the church has lost credibility,” said Paredes, a Chile native who is now CEO of Advocate Community Partners, a network of primary care physicians in New York City. “I expect that he will make a strong appeal for a church that is really transparent [and] truthful.”
But Jesuit Fr. Antonio Delfau, the former longtime editor of Chile’s Jesuit-run Mensaje magazine, said the Barros appointment undercuts what Francis might be able to achieve while in the country.
“One of the bishops appointed by this pope is a bishop that is questioned … not only by the people of the place but also by most of the other bishops,” said Delfau, now based in Rome as the assistant to the Jesuit curia’s general treasurer. “That’s a big problem.”
Barros, who served as the head of Chile’s military diocese until Francis moved him to the small southern city of Osorno in 2015, has been accused of protecting Fr. Fernando Karadima, who was sentenced by the Vatican to a life of prayer and penance in 2011.
Though Barros was not implicated in Karadima’s canonical trial, victims say the bishop destroyed incriminating correspondence from the priest. Other victims claim Barros was even a witness to some of the sexual abuse.
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