Pope ends Latin America trip beset by abuse scandal

LIMA, Peru — Pope Francis wrapped up his visit to Peru on Sundaybydenouncingtheplagueof corruption sweeping through Latin America. But controversy over his accusations that Chilean sex abuse victims slandered a bishop continued to cast a shadow over what has become the most contested and violent trip of his papacy.

A day after his top adviser on sex abuse publicly rebuked him for his Chile remarks, Francis was reminded that the Vatican has faced years of criticism for its inaction over a similar sex abuse scandal in Peru.

“Francis, here there IS proof,” read a banner hanging from a Lima building along his motorcade route Sunday.

The message was a reference to Francis’ comments Thursday in Iquique, Chile, that there was not “one shred of proof ” that a protege of Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, knew of Karadima’s abuse and did nothing to stop it.

Karadima’s victims have accused the bishop, Juan Barros, of complicity in the cover-up. Barros has denied the accusations, and Francis backed him by saying the victims’ claims were “all calumny.”

His comments sparked such an outcry that both the Chilean government and his own top adviser on abuse stepped in to publicly rebuke him — an extraordinary correction of a pope from both church and state. The criticisms were all the more remarkable given that they came on the Argentina-born pontiff ’s home turf in Latin America.

Francis tried to move beyond the scandal Sunday, joking with cloisterednunsthattheyweretaking advantageofhisvisittofinallyget outandgetabreathoffreshair.and he denounced a corruption scandal in Latin America that has even implicated his Peruvian host, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.