Pope to buoy battered Church credibility
SANTIAGO: Pope Francis arrived in Chile on Monday to start a trip aimed at bolstering the credibility of a local Church battered by a sexual abuse crisis.
Tens of thousands of people chanting “Viva Papa Francisco” lined the streets of his route from the airport, where he was greeted by President Michelle Bachelet, to the Vatican embassy, his official residence for three days before he moves on to Peru.
A youth orchestra played on the runway of the airport at an otherwise low-key arrival ceremony when the pope arrived from Rome on an unusually cool and cloudy austral Southern Hemisphere summer evening.
Ms Bachelet said on social media shortly after greeting Pope Francis that Chilean society was much changed since the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1987, during the dictatorship of the Augusto Pinochet.
“We are a society more just, more free, and more tolerant,” she said, adding, however, that inequality still persisted.
Hundreds of people, many of them children waving Chilean and Vatican flags, greeted Pope Francis outside the Vatican nunciature, or embassy, chanting “Pope Francis, friend, Chile is with you”.
Despite the festive atmosphere, Pope Francis faces protests from Catholics upset with his 2015 appointment of Bishop Juan Barros to head the small diocese of Osorno, a city south of the Chilean capital.
Father Barros has been accused of protecting his former mentor, Father Fernando Karadima, whom a Vatican investigation in 2011 found guilty of abusing teenage boys over many years. Father Karadima has denied the allegations and Father Barros said he was unaware of any wrongdoing.
That scandal, which has gripped Chile, and growing secularisation, has hurt the Church.
A poll by Santiago-based think tank Latinobarometro this month showed that the number of Chileans calling themselves Catholics fell to 45% last year, from 74% in 1995.
Pope Francis was expected to speak to it and other problems during his first address yesterday morning to national authorities and the diplomatic corps. He was then scheduled to head to the capital’s Parque O’Higgins to say a Mass expected to attract more than 500,000 people.