Letter about sex abuse cover-up belies pope denial

VATICAN CITY – The letter was graphic not just in describing how the priest kissed and fondled the boy, but also in how other priests who saw the abuse tried to hush it up. Pope Francis said recently that none of the victims had come forward to denounce the cover-up, so the news that the letter was hand-delivered to Francis in 2015 is adding fuel to one of the biggest scandals of his five-year papacy.

The Associated Press obtained the eight-page letter, written in Francis’ native Spanish, and was told by both the victim who wrote it and by members of the pope’s sex-abuse commission that Francis’ top adviser assured them he gave it to the pope.

The pope’s trip to Chile last month was marred by protests over his vigorous defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring the abuse of young parishioners by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. During the trip, Francis dismissed accusations against Barros as “slander.”

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 the letter from Juan Carlos Cruz because they were alarmed by Francis’ recent appointment of Barros as a diocesan bishop. Cruz’s account of the abuse he suffered at Karadima’s hands had helped Vatican investigators decide to remove him from ministry and sentence him in 2011 to a lifetime of “penance and prayer.”

Barros was a Karadima protege, and according to Cruz and other victims, he witnessed the abuse and did nothing.

On April 12, 2015, the members of the sex-abuse commission met with Francis’ top adviser, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, explained their objections to Barros’ appointment as bishop of Osorno, and gave him the letter to deliver to 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.