VATICAN CITY
National Review
February 6, 2018
By Michael Brendan Dougherty
What are we to make of news that Pope Francis was confronted with — and did not address — evidence of sex abuse in the Chilean Church?
Well, it’s now happened. The great scandal of the modern Catholic Church — its tolerance for clergy who abuse children, and its laxity when dealing with bishops who themselves tolerated or enabled priest-abusers — now touches directly on the pope himself.
It’s worth laying out the timeline clearly. In 2015, Pope Francis appointed Juan Barros Madrid to the bishopric of Osorno, Chile. The appointment was met with local protests, among Catholics and non-Catholics who believed that Barros was implicated in the crimes of child sexual abuse committed by his friend Father Fernando Karadima, a prominent Chilean churchman who habitually kissed and fondled boys. In the days after the installation of Barros at Osono, Pope Francis told an archbishop that there was “no objective reason at all” to oppose the appointment. The Vatican’s own department governing these matters, the Congregation for Bishops, released a statement saying they had “carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find objective reasons to preclude the appointment.”
In the months following the appointment, Pope Francis became extremely dismissive of complaints. “Osorno suffers, yes, for silliness,” the pope said of the outrage in the media. “Think with your head, and do not be carried away by the noses of the leftists, who are the ones who put this thing together,” he added.
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