ARGENTINA
Crux
Inés San Martín
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT
ROSARIO, Argentina – Months after his rocky trip to Chile in mid-January, Pope Francis’s visit to the Latin American country is still grabbing headlines, mostly related to the way he’s handled the country’s clerical sexual abuse scandals. The latest: News broke on Tuesday that while in Chile, he met with a Marist brother who’s charged with covering up abuse cases in the country.
The Chilean website The Clinic published a picture showing Francis meeting the recently deceased Brother Mariano Varona, who passed away on Sunday, and is considered one of the key figures in the coverup of cases of child sexual abuse within the Marist congregation.
A Vatican spokesman told Crux on Tuesday, however, that Varona was part of a large group of people who greeted the pope during his farewell to the country, and was invited only because the Marist residence is located in front of the papal embassy where Francis stayed.
“There was no private meeting with Mariano Varona in Chile, nor any private conversation,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke told Crux. “As happens always on the last day of a trip, a large number of people are invited for a baciamano during the farewell in the official residence,” Burke said, using the Italian phrase for the act of kissing the pope’s ring, and which informally simply means a greeting.
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