ROME (ITALY)
Crux
November 15, 2018
By Inés San Martín
A Chilean cardinal who has been at the center of the country’s clerical sexual abuse crisis acknowledged on Wednesday that he’s no longer a member of the council of nine cardinals, referred to as the C9, that advises the pope. In addition, a local prosecutor announced he’ll be summoning him under charges of covering up abusive priests.
Speaking with Radio Cooperativa, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz said that having reached the five-year term he had been appointed to serve the pope in the C9, he had travelled to Rome to say goodbye to the pope and to “thank him for the job he entrusted us with.”
The Vatican’s press office didn’t answer Crux’s request for confirmation.
The C9 is a task force created by Pope Francis at the beginning of his pontificate to reform the government of the Church, known as the Roman Curia. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston is the lone American on the commission.
On the same day Errazuriz made his announcement, the prosecutors’ office in Chile announced that they will be summoning the cardinal to testify on the alleged cover up of the actions of Father Jorge Laplagne, who’s been accused of sexually abusing minors.
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