PINELLAS PARK (FL)
Legal Examiner blog
March 25, 2019
By Joseph H. Saunders
In the wake of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin’s conviction for failing to report a known pedophile priest to police, the princes of the Catholic Church are under increasing scrutiny. Cardinal George Pell of Australia and the Vatican’s chief financial officer has been found guilty on charges that he molested children decades ago. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been kicked out of the priesthood.
After centuries of impunity, cardinals from Chile to Australia and points in between are facing justice in both the Vatican and government courts for their own sexual misdeeds or for having shielded abusers under their watch.
This isn’t the first time we’ve read stories about the misbehaviors of cardinals, especially concerning the child sex abuse scandal. We know Philadelphia Cardinals Krol and Bevilacqua were unscathed by the Philadelphia Grand Jury Reports. Krol had been dead for decades when the Philly Grand Jury Reports were published and Bevilacqua was too ill to testify.
Cardinals are under increasing scrutiny concerning how they administered their archdioceses and how they handled allegations of priest abuse in their parishes. Some cardinals are under criminal investigation. The current and former archbishops of Santiago are under investigation by Chilean prosecutors for allegedly covering up for abusive priests.
Errazuriz, who retired as Santiago archbishop in 2010, was recently forced to resign from Francis’ kitchen cabinet after the depth of his cover-up was exposed last year.
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