ROME
Crux
Inés San Martín
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT
May 14, 2018
ROME – Some might say that the 34 Chilean bishops who are now in Rome to meet with Pope Francis to address the way they’ve handled clerical sexual abuse scandals are like lambs to the slaughter. Two of them projected just that image when talking to journalists on Monday, saying that they’ve come to Rome with “pain,” “shame,” and “humility,” to “listen” and “discern.”
Bishop Fernando Ramos Pérez, secretary general of the Chilean bishops’ conference, said that the bishops who have arrived in Rome have done so with “pain, because there are people who’ve been victims of abuse,” but also with shame, “because the abuses have occurred in ecclesial environments where this type of abuse should never happen.”
“We have made mistakes, many mistakes,” said Bishop Ignacio González, who acknowledged that the Catholic Church in Chile had failed when it comes to protecting children.
The bishop, a member of the Chilean council for the prevention of abuse and accompaniment of victims said he “understood the rage, the anger,” of Chilean survivors of abuse who’ve asked for Cardinal Francisco Errazuriz, the former Archbishop of Santiago, to face trial for covering up abuse.
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