Pope Wraps Latin America Trip Haunted by Chile Abuse Scandal

LIMA (PERU)
Associated Press via NBC-TV Dallas-Fort Worth

January 21, 2018

By Nicole Winfield and Christine Armario

During his seven-day trip in Chile and Peru Francis personally apologized to survivors of priests who sexually abused them

Pope Francis wrapped up his visit to Peru on Sunday by meeting with bishops and nuns, but controversy over his accusations that Chilean sex abuse victims slandered a bishop cast a shadow over what has become the most contested and violent trip of his papacy.

A day after his top adviser on sex abuse publicly rebuked him for his Chile remarks, Francis was reminded that the Vatican has faced years of criticism for its inaction over a similar sex abuse scandal in neighboring Peru.

“Francis, here there IS proof,” read a banner hanging from a Lima building along his motorcade route Sunday.

The message was a reference to Francis’ Jan. 18 comments in Iquique, Chile, that there was not “one shred of proof” that a protege of Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, knew of Karadima’s abuse and did nothing to stop it. Karadima’s victims have accused the bishop, Juan Barros, of complicity in the cover-up. Barros has denied the accusations, and Francis backed him by saying the victims’ claims were “all calumny.”

His comments sparked such an outcry that both the Chilean government and his own top adviser on abuse stepped in to publicly rebuke him — an extraordinary correction of a pope from both church and state. The criticisms were all the more remarkable because they came on the Argentina-born pontiff’s home turf in Latin America.

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