A 2015 letter detailed allegations against Barros. Did the Pope receive it?

February 5, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Vatican City, Feb 5, 2018 / 12:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Chilean survivor of sexual abuse says that he wrote a letter to Pope Francis in 2015, claiming that Bishop Juan Barros of Chile witnessed abuse perpetrated by his friend, Father Fernando Karadima, and that the Pope failed to act on the letter.

In April 2015, Marie Collins, then a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Minors (PCMP), along with three other members of the Commission, met with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Pope’s top advisor on sex abuse, giving him a letter from a victim of Karadima to deliver to the Pope, according to a Feb. 5 report from the Associated Press.

The meeting followed Francis’ controversial appointment of Barros as Bishop of Osorno, Chile, in January 2015.

Collins told the AP that O’Malley said he would deliver the letter to Pope Francis. The letter’s author, Juan Carlos Cruz, now living and working in Philadelphia, told the AP that O’Malley told him in 2015 that the letter had been delivered to Francis.

The eight-page letter alleges that as a young priest, Barros witnessed the sexual abuse of other young priests and teens by Karadima, including kissing and genital-touching, “innumerable times” and that he “covered up everything.”

It also states that Barros himself was engaged in sexual acts with Karadima.

Karadima, who once led a lay movement from his parish in El Bosque, was convicted of sexually abusing minors in a 2011 Vatican trial, and at the age of 84, was sentenced to a life of prayer and solitude.

The AP report comes less than one week after Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna of Malta, widely regarded as an expert in the canonical norms governing allegations of sexual abuse, as a Vatican delegate to examine accusations against Barros.

The Pope has defended Barros on multiple occasions, including the return-flight from Chile Jan. 21, when he told journalists that he had not seen any evidence against Barros. He also said: “If a person comes and gives me evidence, I am the first to listen to him. We should be just.”

In a Jan. 30 statement the Vatican said that “following some information recently received regarding the case of Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid,” the Pope has asked Scicluna to travel to Santiago “to listen to those who have expressed the desire to submit items in their possession.”

In addition to overseeing the Diocese of Malta, in 2015 Scicluna was named by the Pope to oversee the doctrinal team charged with handling appeals filed by clergy accused of abuse in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Scicluna served as the congregation’s Promoter of Justice for 17 years, beginning in 1995.

Fr. Robert Gahl, a professor of ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, told CNA Feb. 5 that the case of Karadima and Barros “is kind of particular,” because at the time of the abuse, Barros wasn’t a bishop yet.

Therefore, “his alleged failure to report did not constitute episcopal negligence and yet his being somehow an accessory, at least insofar as he is accused of not having stopped a crime from taking place, would constitute the negligence of someone who is now a bishop,” he noted.

It is not known if Pope Francis has or has not seen Cruz’s letter, and Gahl said that just because someone can write to him, “doesn’t mean that he actually sees the letter personally.” It appears that until recently, the Pope did not have had the full information, he said.

In 2015, the year the letter was reportedly given to Pope Francis, the Vatican took measures against other Church authorities accused of covering up or failing to report clergy sexual abuse in their dioceses.

Bishop Robert Finn, formerly head of the St. Joseph-Kansas City, Missouri diocese, resigned in April 2015, after being convicted of a misdemeanor for failure to report an allegation of clergy sexual abuse.

Also in 2015, the resignation of Bishop John Nienstedt, formerly head of the St. Paul-Minneapolis diocese, was accepted by the Vatican after he was accused of negligence in the handling of some allegations of sexual abuse.

 

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Laity, gender ideology shared concerns for Pope and Panama’s bishops

June 10, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Jun 10, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- World Youth Day wasn’t the only topic on the agenda for Panama’s bishops during their meeting with Pope Francis this week: they also touched on the role of the laity and the dangers of gender ideology – both key topics for the universal Church.

Archbishop José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta of Panama, president of the Panama bishops conference, told journalists June 8 that gender ideology “is really being pushed in Panama,” and was a major talking point in their meeting with Pope Francis.

The bishops are concluding a trip to Rome for their ad limina visit, during which they met with several Vatican departments and had a nearly 2-hour discussion with Pope Francis June 8.

Archbishop Ulloa described the meeting as “marvelous, a brotherly visit,” in which they exchanged jokes, asked questions, and voiced concerns freely.

The international WYD encounter set to take place in Panama in 2019 was of course a big topic, as well as the youth in general. However, particular concern was raised about the growing threat gender ideology poses to youth and to families.

“Let’s say something that in other media doesn’t sell so well: gender ideology is demonic,” Archbishop Ulloa said. “It wants to break with the reality of the family and it does so by getting in so softly that we don’t realize it.”

It is never permissible to impose an ideology, he said, stressing the need to respect others, “but having very clear the importance of the family according to the plan of God: man and woman.”

In comments to CNA, Cardinal José Luis Lacunza Maestrojuan of David said Pope Francis “is very worried about Latin America” and listened carefully to what the bishops had to say.

“We listened to his concerns, he listened to our concerns, and from there we had a very fraternal dialogue, very nice, very friendly,” the cardinal said, explaining that the Pope allowed them to share and ask questions, and he responded by giving his own ideas and opinions.

Cardinal Lacunza said that right now in Panama, “there is a real escalation in the media and in the environment to impose, even in the educational field, this theme of gender ideology (on) young children.”

He said there is currently “a fight” between those who are pushing gender ideology as a human right and those who, from the perspectives of faith and reason, “say that it is in no way a human right.”

“The homosexuals have a right to be respected in their dignity and not to be discriminated against,” the cardinal said, emphasizing the need to go from “a society that has to assume as good or acceptable this opinion,” to one that teaches children “that there is a very big path that we are not willing to take, we are not willing to compromise.”

When asked what the Church can do to help, Cardinal Lacunza said it is essential to remember that “the Church” includes the laity – not just clerics.

As bishops, “we can’t do anything,” he said. “We can give orientations, guidelines, but the ones who have to take the baton in their hands are the laity.”

It is the laity who must “fight for adequate legislation in education and other areas,” he said, and, pointing to a recent initiative in the country, said the push to have “an encyclopedia of genitalia” as if it were the most important educational text “is the wrong path.”

There are already lay people working in this area, the cardinal said, adding that “this is what we want: that they are the ones with the baton.”

Youth and laity were also key topics in the meeting with Pope Francis, stemming from discussion on World Youth Day.

Francis has often condemned a clericalist attitude prevalent in Latin America, calling it in a 2016 letter to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America  “one of the greatest distortions of the Church” in the region.

So it’s not surprising that the role of the laity came up with the Panamanian bishops. In fact, Archbishop Ulloa said the Pope stressed “the importance of believing in the laity,” because the laity “are also capable of transforming our society.”

This also includes the youth, the archbishop said, explaining that Pope Francis also focused on the “spaces and opportunities” that must be provided to the youth.

“In the Church, in the world, many things will change, and youth will truly fight to have a place in this time of transformation,” he said, noting how Pope Francis said that youth “are not [just] the future,” but rather, “they are the present of the Church, and the present of humanity.”

“What a responsibility it is for them also to be a youth in this time!” Archbishop Ulloa said, adding that the youth are “the fresh air that we have to continue hoping in for a different world.” If this world is possible, he said, “it’s possible thanks to the youth.”

 

Alvaro de Juana contributed to this piece.

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