Pope defrocks Chilean priest for child sexual assault

POPE FRANCIS has defrocked the Chilean priest at the centre of the global sex abuse scandal rocking his papacy, invoking his “supreme” authority to stiffen a sentence handed out by a Vatican court in 2011.

In a statement yesterday, the Vatican said Francis had laicised the 88-yearold Rev Fernando Karadima, who was originally sanctioned to live a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for having sexually abused minors in the upscale Santiago parish he ran.

The “penance and prayer” sanction has been the Vatican’s punishment of choice for elderly priests convicted of sexual crimes but has long been criticised by victims as too soft.

The Vatican did not say what new evidence, if any, prompted Francis to re-evaluate Karadima’s sanction and impose what clergy consider to be the equivalent of a death sentence. It said Francis made the “exceptional decision” for the good of the Church and cited the canon that lays out the Pope’s “supreme, full, immediate and universal power” to serve the Church.

The statement said the decree, signed on Thursday, takes effect immediately and that Karadima was informed of it yesterday. The decision seemed to have the objective of showing a get-tough approach to sex abuse after a series of mis-steps by Francis and accusations by a former Vatican ambassador that the Pope had rehabilitated a now-disgraced former American cardinal early on in his papacy.

While the move will be welcomed by Chilean victims as overdue, the decision could spark a religious debate for those who see it as a second punishment for the same crime. The pontiff ’s conservative critics might also bristle at another display of raw papal power from the Argentine Jesuit. Francis sparked a crisis in his papacy this year when he defended Bishop Juan Barros, one of Karadima’s protégés, against accusations that he had witnessed Karadima’s abuse and ignored it.

The Pope had claimed that the accusations against Bishop Barros were “calumny” and politically motivated, and he defended his 2015 decision to appoint him bishop of a small Chilean diocese over the objections of the faithful and many in the Chilean hierarchy. After realising that something was amiss, Francis ordered a Vatican investigation that uncovered decades of abuse and cover-ups by the Chilean church leadership. He apologised to the victims and set about making amends, including getting every active bishop in Chile to offer to resign.

To date, he has accepted seven of the more than 30 resignations offered, including that of Mr Barros.