Never again: Pope denounces ‘culture of abuse, coverup’

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis became the first pope to publicly denounce a “culture of abuse and coverup” in the Catholic Church, saying Thursday he was ashamed that neither he nor Chile’s Catholic leaders truly ever listened to victims as the country’s abuse scandal spiraled.

“Never again,” Francis said in a pastoral letter to the Chilean faithful on the eve of another weekend he will spend listening to victims of Chile’s most notorious predator priest. The letter was issued on the same day the Vatican announced its top abuse investigators were returning to Chile on a pastoral mission.

In the eight-page letter, Francis once again thanked victims for their “valiant perseverance” in denouncing abuse and searching for the truth “even against all hopes or attempts to discredit them.”

He included himself among the guilty in failing to actually accompany victims, saying, “With shame I must say that we didn’t know how to listen or respond in time.”

And he spoke repeatedly of a “culture of abuse and coverup.”

No other pope has publicly spoken of a culture of coverup in the church. The Vatican has focused for the past decade on punishing abusers themselves rather than the bishops and religious superiors who moved pedophiles from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police or removing them from ministry.

Victims and their advocates have long pointed to the hierarchy’s culture of coverup — the silencing and discrediting of victims, the effort to avoid scandal and the reflexive aim to safeguard the interests and reputation of the church at all costs — as the Vatican’s main failure in dealing with the problem.

Francis apparently came around to their view after meeting with Chilean victims of the Rev. Fernando Karadima and reading a 2,300-page report prepared for him by Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, who spent nearly two weeks in Chile interviewing victims of Karadima and others.

The Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Thursday that Scicluna and Bertomeu were returning to Chile in the coming days on a pastoral mission to the diocese of Osorno to help the church there heal from the scandal.

Osorno has been badly divided ever since Francis in 2015 tapped Bishop Juan Barros to lead the diocese over the objections of some of Chile’s other bishops. Barros had been a top Karadima lieutenant and had been accused by Karadima’s victims of having witnessed and ignored their abuse.

Barros denied the charge, but he was one of the 30-plus Chilean bishops who submitted their resignations to the pope after Francis summoned them to

Rome for a dressing down and briefing on the Scicluna report.

Juan Carlos Claret, a spokesman for a group of lay Catholics in Osorno, said the visit was “the least we could hope for,” given that the pope himself was responsible for Osorno’s problems. He recalled that Francis appointed Barros over the objections of Osorno faithful and some of Chile’s bishops, and then kept him there despite three years of protests.

The pope is widely expected to accept Barros’ resignation the third time around, along with the other Karadima-trained bishops and an unknown number of other diocesan bishops.

Presumably, after meeting with Osorno’s Catholic community, Scicluna and Bertomeu will be able to report back to Francis on the pastoral needs of the diocese and the profile of a new bishop.