CHILE
Associated Press
May 14, 2018
EVA VERGARA
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Even as Pope Francis apologized for his failures in connection with Chile’s most famous case of clerical sex abuse, the pope and that country’s deeply discredited Catholic Church are under mounting pressure to address another, even bigger sex scandal.
The blooming scandal of the Marist Brothers, a congregation dedicated to education, has not yet drawn great attention worldwide — unlike allegations that a bishop covered up the crimes of a pedophile priest, Rev. Fernando Karadima.
Francis recently spent several days at his Vatican hotel in talks with three of Karadima’s victims; this week he is meeting with all of Chile’s bishops to address the crisis that has implicated several church leaders and religious orders.
In the Marist case, the accusations of abuse are many.
“It’s a situation of systematic abuse where there are multiple abusers throughout time, within and outside the congregation,” Juan Pablo Hermosilla, an attorney for some of the victims told The Associated Press. He said that there at least 20 cases of abuse, but that there could be more.
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