2015 letter belies pope’s claim of ignorance of sexual abuse
Pope faces biggest crisis in papacy
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis received a victim’s letter in 2015 that graphically detailed how a priest sexually abused him and how other Chilean clergy ignored it, contradicting the pope’s recent insistence that no victims had come forward to denounce the cover-up, the letter’s author and members of Francis’ own sex- abuse commission have told The Associated Press.
The fact that Francis received the eight-page letter, obtained by the AP, challenges his insistence that he has “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and cover-ups. It also calls into question his stated empathy with abuse survivors in the most serious crisis of his five-year papacy.
The scandal exploded last month when Francis’ trip to South America was marred by protests over his vigorous defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring the abuse by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. During the trip, Francis callously dismissed accusations against Bishop Barros as “slander,” seemingly unaware that victims had placed Bishop Barros at the scene of Karadima’s crimes.
On the plane home, confronted by an AP reporter, the pope said: “You, in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward.”
But members of the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors say that in April 2015, they sent a delegation to Rome specifically to hand-deliver a letter to the pope about Bishop Barros. The letter from Juan Carlos Cruz detailed the abuse, kissing and fondling he says he suffered at Karadima’s hands, which he said Bishop Barros and others saw but did nothing to stop.
Four members of the commission met with Francis’ top abuse adviser, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, explained their concerns about Francis’ appointment of Bishop Barros as a bishop in southern Chile, and gave him the letter to deliver to Francis.
“When we gave [Cardinal O’Malley] the letter for the pope, he assured us he would give it to the pope and speak of the concerns,” then-commission member Marie Collins told the AP. “And at a later date, he assured us that that had been done.”
Mr. Cruz, who now lives and works in Philadelphia, heard the same later that year.
“Cardinal O’Malley called me after the pope’s visit here in Philadelphia and he told me, among other things, that he had given the letter to the pope — in his hands,” he said ina Sunday interview.
Neither the Vatican nor Cardinal O’Malley responded to multiple requests for comment.
Anne Barrett Doyle — the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S.-based group that has compiled a clergy abuse database — said Monday’s revelations point to “inexcusable dysfunction at best and willful deception atworst.”
Hours earlier, Juan Carlos Claret, a spokesman for Laicos de Osorno, a lay Catholic group in southern Chile that has opposed Bishop Barros, said Monday’s news about Francis “brings an end to his ‘zero tolerance’ rhetoric.” Mr. Claret said the pope and his subordinates must now answer the question of “who decided to constantly discredit the testimony of the victims.”
Mr. Claret told the AP: “It’s not possible to maintain, as some do, that the pope didn’t know and that he had slanted information. Instead, we’re in the presence of a pope who had full knowledge of it all, and still decides to submit a community to unspeakable suffering.”
While the 2015 summit of Francis’ commission was known and publicized at the time, the contents of Mr. Cruz’s letter — and a photograph of Ms. Collins handing it to Cardinal O’Malley — were not disclosed by members. Mr. Cruz provided the letter, and Ms. Collins provided the photo, after reading an AP story that reported Francis had claimed to have never heard from any Karadima victims about Bishop Barros’ behavior.
The revelation could be costly for Francis, whose track record on the abuse crisis was already shaky after a botched Italian abuse case he intervened in became public. More recently, he let the abuse commission lapse at the end of last year. Vatican analysts now openly question whether he “gets it,” and some of his own advisers privately acknowledge that maybe he doesn’t.