A corporal work of mercy.

A corporal work of mercy.
Click on photo for this corporal work of mercy!
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts

Tuesday 20 October 2020

Tuesday 31 March 2015

Vatican makes statement on appointment of Bishop of Osorno, Chile

It seems that Rome has decided to speak:

(Vatican Radio) The vice-director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Ciro Benedettini, has issued the following statement concerning the nomination of Bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid as Bishop of Osorno, Chile:
"Prior to the recent appointment of His Excellency Msgr. Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid as bishop of Osorno, Chile, the Congregation for Bishops carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find objective reasons to preclude the appointment."

Roma locuta, causa finita est.

Monday 23 March 2015

Holy Father: Why have you allowed this man to take possession of his Cathedra?

Pope Francis with Bishop Juan Barros
Only days after stripping the disgraced pervert Cardinal, Keith O'Brien of his title and power and sending him to retire quietly in a £200,000 cottage, Pope Francis; amidst the outrage of the people of the Diocese of Osorno in Chile has permitted another bishop to take his Cathedra - a man implicated in the scandal of sodomy and perversion and the abuse of three men from the time they were boys. Is this to be considered another "who am I to judge" episode as with Msgr. Ricca appointed to a high position within the Vatican Bank? If so, then the definition of scandal has been forgotten along with a real understanding of mercy for those victimised by the evil and perverted pederasts who performed abominable acts upon young boys of teenaged years.

Victims ignored

Bishop Juan Barros, formerly of the Military Ordinariate in Chile has been made Ordinary of the Diocese of Osorno. Juan Carlos Cruz Chellew, James Hamilton Sánchez and José Andrés Murillo Urrutia said on Crux that they were "accustomed to the blows we have received from the Chilean hierarchy, but never directly from the Holy Father. It is hard to believe that it was the Pope himself who said a few days ago: "families should know that the Church makes great efforts to protect their children, who have a right to address her with confidence, because it is as safe house."

The Pope knew

Since this appointment was announced in January, Chileans have been outraged. Crux further reports that "The Archbishop of Concepción, Fernando Chomalí, met with the Pope a few weeks ago and warned him that the Barros appointment was causing consternation in Chile, not only in the community of Osorno, but throughout the country. Pope Francis admitted to knowing the suffering of the victims of Karadima and the damage to the Chilean church. However — despite everything — the Pope, through the Nuncio in Chile, Ivo Scapolo, reconfirmed Barros without considering the facts and warnings of so many people, including priests and bishops. With pain we see that the faithful will have to accept and deal with Pope Francis’ decision. A pain and fear we know too well."


Yet, Pope Francis still proceeded in spite of the warning. 
This is a scandal to the people of Osorno; it is a scandal and an insult to the three victims assaulted by a homosexual pederast priest whilst the then Fr. Juan Barros, watched.

The world is watching

Crux has now been reporting on this since it broke last week at the Associated Press. Patheos has picked it up finally and the secular media from the Toronto Star to the BBC to Al Jazeera are running with the story

The Pope must be accountable for this; not just to Almighty God, but to the smelly sheep in the periphery. 

As I stated in an interview with "From Rome" - Let us not, as Catholics, give an exaggerated status to any pope along the lines of what our protestant friends think – an infallibility without respect for the Gospel, which he does not possess. The First Vatican Council defined it very clearly.

All the talk of mercy, thumbs up photographs and the washing of feet and the daily media spin from the manipulators in the Vatican Press Office won't fix this. The Pope himself is responsible for this and there is no spinning out of it.

It is a disgrace to Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. 

In their dictatorship of mercy and condemnation of the Law and those who try to live by it some appear to have forgotten who is in charge.



Monday 16 March 2015

Has Pope Francis appointed a Bishop that witnessed abuse to a Chilean Diocese?

The people of Chile and the Catholic faithful of the world deserve an answer.

Holy Father, who put this name before you? 

I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you did not know. 

Now you know.

We are keen to know Holy Father, what are your intentions?

On the other hand you're right and who am I to judge?





The Huffington Post had this on February 20, 2015.




Pope's zero tolerance for pedophiles faces test in Chile


Associated Press



In this April 8, 2011 photo, Bishop Juan Barros arrives to the Episcopal Conference of Chile in El Quisco, Chile. Barros has been tapped by Pope Francis to become bishop of a southern Chilean diocese in March 2015, provoking an unprecedented outcry by abuse victims and Catholic faithful who contend he covered up sexual abuse committed by his mentor and superior, Rev. Fernando Karadima, in the 1980s and 90s. Barros has declined to comment publicly on allegations against him. (AP Photo/La Tercera)
.
View gallery

  • .
  • .
  • .
  • .
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Juan Carlos Cruz recalls that he and another teen boy would lie down on the priest's bed, one resting his head at the man's shoulder, another sitting near his feet. The priest would kiss the boys and grope them, he said, all while the Rev. Juan Barros watched.
"Barros was there, and he saw it all," Cruz, now a 51-year-old journalist, told The Associated Press.
Barros has been tapped by Pope Francis to become bishop of a southern Chilean diocese this month, provoking an unprecedented outcry by abuse victims and Catholic faithful who contend he covered up sexual abuse committed by his mentor and superior, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, in the 1980s and '90s. A Vatican investigation found Karadima guilty in 2011 and sentenced the now 84-year-old priest to a cloistered life of "penitence and prayer" for what is Chile's highest-profile case of abuse by a priest.
Barros had long declined to comment publicly on allegations against him. However, in a letter sent Monday to the priests of the diocese he'll be overseeing, he said he did not know about Karadima's abuses when they happened.
"I never had knowledge of, or could have imagined, the serious abuses that this priest committed against the victims," said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.
Now bishop for Chile's armed forces, he has said he learned of Karadima's abuse through a 2010 news report he saw on television, according to court records.
While not directly accused of abuse, Barros is said by at least three victims to have witnessed the sexual molestation at the Sacred Heart of Jesus church, part of the El Bosque parish that serves an affluent neighborhood of Santiago.
That history has parishioners, clergy and lawmakers in this predominantly Catholic country protesting the pope's decision to appoint Barros, 58, to become spiritual leader over the diocese in Osorno, about 580 miles (930 kilometers) south of Santiago.
More than 1,300 church members in Osorno, along with some 30 priests from the diocese and 51 of Chile's 120 members of Parliament, sent letters to Francis in February urging him to rescind the appointment, which was announced in January and is set to take effect on March 21.
They have not heard back and Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi declined to comment on the matter.
Numerous attempts to reach Barros were not successful; nor has he responded to the victims' accusations or the outcry over his appointment.
The Rev. Peter Kleigel, deputy pastor of the Sacred Heart parish in Osorno, is among those vocally opposing Barros' arrival.
"We're convinced that this appointment is not correct because, following canon law, a bishop must be well-regarded," he told the AP. "We need a bishop who's credible."
Such complaints come even as Francis said this month that a minster needs not only God's blessing, but the blessing of "his people" to do his work.
The controversy is being watched by victims, advocacy groups and others as a test of whether Francis will meet their demands to hold bishops accountable for having ignored or covered up wrongdoing by priests.
Anne Barrett Doyle from BishopAccountability.org, an online resource about abusive priests and complicit bishops, called the appointment "bafflingly inconsistent" with Francis' promise to root out abuse.
"The pope should have suspended and investigated Barros, not given him another diocese to run," Barrett Doyle said in an email to the AP.
Karadima led the parish of El Bosque for nearly six decades before allegations came to light in April 2010, when a news investigation into the abuse was broadcast on state television. Two months later, the archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, forwarded the allegations to the Vatican amid an eruption of abuse cases globally.
Victims say allegations against Karadima were reported earlier, but were ignored by the cardinal. Errazuriz, who is one of nine cardinals on Pope Francis' key advisory panel, has acknowledged in court testimony that he failed to act on several abuse allegations because he believed them to be untrue.
Karadima, who lives in isolation at a nun's convent, is barred from having contact with anyone outside of his own family.
Criminal charges against Karadima were dismissed in 2011 by Judge Jessica Gonzalez because the statute of limitations had expired. However, Gonzalez said that based on her interviews of Cruz and other victims during her yearlong investigation, she determined their accusations were truthful and dated "at least as far back as 1962."
Victims say they were between ages 14 and 17 when they first were abused by Karadima.
A letter detailing abuse allegations against Karadima was sent by some victims to Cardinal Francisco Fresno in 1982. But authors of the letter accuse Barros, who then was the cardinal's private secretary, of intercepting it and destroying it.
Francisco Gomez, 52, a publicist who says he was molested by Karadima, told the AP that he signed the letter drafted by two other victims. A friend of his who worked with Fresno, Juan Hoelzzel, told Gomez that Barros ripped it up after reading it — an account that was recorded in testimony during the criminal investigation.
Speaking to the AP, Gomez said he was told by Hoelzzel: "As long as Juan Barros is there, there is no doubt that this will happen again."
During Karadima's criminal trial, Barros confirmed that Hoelzzel, who has since died, had worked in the archbishop's office. Regarding the letter, court documents quote Barros as saying he had "no knowledge" of its existence, adding "I neither deny it nor affirm it."
In his letter on Monday, Barros said: "I never had knowledge of any complaint regarding Father Karadima while secretary to the Cardinal."
Barros is one of four bishops who were mentored by Karadima and defended him from the accusations.
Cruz has said that during the time he was abused, Karadima and Barros behaved intimately with one another in his presence.
"I saw Karadima and Juan Barros kissing and touching each other. The groping generally came from Karadima touching Barros' genitals," Cruz said in a January letter to Monsignor Ivo Scapolo, the papal nuncio in Chile. Cruz provided a copy of the letter to the AP.
Despite Francis' pledge to have no tolerance for abuse by priests, James Hamilton, another victim of Karadima's, said the appointment demonstrates to him that the church "had not changed."
Hamilton, now a 49-year-old doctor, said Barros enjoyed watching Karadima commit the abuse.
"I saw how Barros watched it all," he said.
Since 2004, Barros has been bishop for Chile's military, an appointment made by Pope John Paul II. Previously, he was assistant bishop in the port city of Valparaiso and bishop of the northern city of Iquique.
No representatives of his former dioceses have spoken out in his defense. On Saturday, Chile's papal nuncio published a letter urging parishioners in Osorno to welcome Barros and "prepare, by way of prayer and good works, for the beginning of his pastoral governance."
_________
Associated Press reporter Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.