Pope Francis’s remark that he had received “no evidence” that a Chilean bishop had witnessed clerical abuse and done nothing about it has been challenged by members of a Vatican commission.
The Pope made the remark during his trip to Chile and again speaking to reporters on the papal plane home.
Associated Press reported that in 2015, four members of a commission on child protection set up by Francis had given an eight-page letter to Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Vatican’s senior abuse adviser, that graphically described abuse by Fr Fernando Karadima.
The letter claimed that Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, then a young priest and protégé of Fr Karadima, had witnessed kissing and fondling by the older priest “innumerable times” and ignored it. The letter was delivered in April 2015, a month after Bishop Barros was appointed Bishop of Osorno.
Marie Collins, who resigned as a Vatican abuse adviser last year, was one of the four who hand-delivered the letter. She wrote on Twitter: “This is why I was shocked when I heard the Pope had said on the plane the Karadima victims had not come to him and he would listen if they did. I knew they had contacted him directly with this letter three years ago.”
The letter was written by abuse survivor Juan Carlos Cruz, who told AP he felt as if he had been slapped when he heard the Pope say he had not received any evidence.
“I couldn’t believe that someone so high up like the Pope himself could lie about this,” he said.
News of the letter came after Pope Francis asked the Vatican’s most respected abuse investigator to gather new information in Chile concerning Bishop Barros. The Vatican said the Pope was sending Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to review the matter after the Pope received “some information recently with regards to the case”.
Pope Francis had decided to send the archbishop to the Chilean capital “to listen to those who expressed a willingness to submit information in their possession”.
Pope Francis named Bishop Barros to lead the Diocese in Osorno in March 2015.
The Pope told reporters on the papal plane last month that while “covering up abuse is an abuse in itself”, if he had punished Bishop Barros without moral certainty “I would be committing the crime of a bad judge”.
Dutch doctors euthanise 29-year-old with depression
Doctors in the Netherlands have performed euthanasia on a young woman who was suffering from mental health problems.
Aurelia Brouwers, 29, who was physically fit, was given a lethal injection less than a month after winning an eight-year battle to end her life.
Her bouts of depression, she argued, made her life intolerable. She had spent nearly three years in a mental health institution and another two and half years in prison.
She died in the company of friends and family after announcing on Facebook: “I am finally dying today.”
Her death for mental health reasons was greeted with shock by MPs and peers in Britain.
Lord Carlile, the co-chairman of Living and Dying Well, said: “I am horrified. This is a case which illustrates the grave dangers presented by euthanasia and assisted dying.”
Fiona Bruce, the Conservative MP for Congleton and the chairwoman of the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, said that one in four Britons “experience mental health problems at some time in their life”.
“What is then needed, as it was for this young woman, is treatment, not termination,” she said.
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