NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press
February 17, 2018
By Claudia Torrens
A key victim in the Chilean sex abuse scandal said he felt his story was finally heard after an hours-long meeting with a Vatican sex-crimes investigator on Saturday, the same day Pope Francis revived his lapsed sex abuse advisory commission amid criticism of how he is handling the scandal.
The meeting at a Manhattan church between Archbishop Charles Scicluna and whistleblower Juan Carlos Cruz was “intense, detailed and eye-opening,” Cruz said to the reporters outside the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. Scicluna didn’t speak to reporters after the meeting that lasted more than three hours.
“For the first time I felt that someone is listening,” Cruz said. “I think (Scicluna) was sincerely moved by what I was saying. He cried.”
Cruz said they mainly spoke about Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, whom Pope Francis has vigorously defended. Barros is accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring the abuse of young parishioners by the Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was removed from ministry and sentenced to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” in 2010.
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