VATICAN CITY
Associated Press
June 2, 2018
By Nicole Winfield
Pope Francis dug deeper into the roots of Chile’s sex abuse scandal by meeting Saturday with a group of priests who were trained in a cult-like Catholic community and suffered psychological and sexual abuse there.
Francis celebrated Mass with priests trained by the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a powerful preacher in Chile who was sentenced by the Vatican in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer for having sexually and spiritually abused young parishioners through an abuse of power.
The Vatican said the Mass and subsequent weekend meetings would help Francis better understand life inside Karadima’s El Bosque community, which catered to the rich and powerful of Santiago society during and after the Pinochet dictatorship.
A Vatican statement said Francis hopes to help heal the divisions that the El Bosque scandal has created in Chile’s church and help rebuild healthy relationships between priests and their flock “once they become conscious of their own wounds.”
El Bosque generated some 30 priests and four bishops before Karadima was removed from ministry and a priestly society affiliated with El Bosque was closed. The recent eruption of the scandal has focused on one of the four bishops, Juan Barros, after Francis strongly defended him only to then admit he had made grave errors in judgment.
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