The sexual abuse of minors by clergy of the Catholic Church in Chile and the failure of Church officials to respond and take responsibility attracted worldwide attention as a critical failure of Pope Francis and the Church as a whole to address the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Among a number of cases, that of Father Fernando Karadima, which became public in 2010, raised questions about the responsibility and complicity of several Chilean bishops, including some of the country's highest-ranking Catholic prelates.
Karadima was accused as early as 1984 of sexually abusing minors. Reports of abuse were not addressed and an early investigation that found accusations against Karadima credible was ignored. When the Vatican found Karadima guilty of sexually abusing minors and psychological abuse in February 2011, it denied him the right to function as a priest for the rest of his life. Several priests he had mentored had by then become bishops. In 2015, Pope Francis appointed one of them, Juan Barros Madrid, to head the diocese of Osorno, provoking protests, especially from the local Catholic community. The appointment proved controversial in Chile, and Pope Francis' defense of Barros in January 2018 drew such an outcry from victims of sexual abuse and their advocates, including Cardinal Seán O'Malley, head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, that Francis ordered a reexamination of the cases of sexual abuse in Chile by the Vatican's chief expert on priestly sexual abuse of minors, Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna. Convinced by the report from that investigation of a widespread failure of the Church hierarchy to recognize and respond to the sexual abuse crisis, Francis called all of Chile's bishops to Rome for consultation, and there all of the country's active bishops offered their resignations.
On July 11, 2019, the statute of limitations on reporting sex abuse against children was removed amid the ongoing sex abuse crisis in the Chilean Catholic Church. On August 30, 2019, Inés San Martín of Crux stated that the Catholic Church in Chile was "hit hardest by the clerical abuse crisis outside the English-speaking world."
Karadima
Background Father Fernando Karadima (6 August 1930 – 26 July 2021) was a spiritual leader and father figure for young men from Santiago's social elite. He was based in the "Parroquia El Bosque", which serves some of Santiago's wealthiest and most influential families. His connections extended to officials in the military government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and to the papal nuncio to Chile, Angelo Sodano, who became a cardinal and Vatican Secretary of State in 1991. Karadima was a dynamic leader, described as "Impeccably dressed and with perfectly groomed nails and slicked-back hair", who "cut an aristocratic figure, appealing to both young and old in Chile's elite."
In 1984 a group of parishioners reported "improper conduct" on the part of Karadima to Juan Francisco Fresno, Archbishop of Santiago de Chile. One of them later told a court that he learned that their letter was "torn up and thrown away". Fresno's secretary at the time was one of Karadima's protégés, Juan Barros.
In mid-2003, a young Catholic, José Murillo, informed Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, the new Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, by letter that he had been abused by Karadima. The Episcopal Conference of Chile had established guidelines for handling accusations of sexual abuse by clergy months earlier, and the guidelines called for an investigation if the accuser demonstrates "good faith" and did not require an assessment of the accusation itself. Errázuriz told Murillo he was praying for him and in June 2004 he opened the first investigation into Karadima. Two years later, the investigator told Errázuriz that he found the accusers credible and suggesting certain courses of action. Errázuriz rejected the report. He explained years later in an interview with the magazine Qué Pasa that he mistakenly relied on someone else's assessment: "I made a mistake: I asked and overvalued the opinion of a person very close to the accused and the accuser. While the promoter of justice thought that the accusation was plausible, this other person affirmed just the opposite."
Public investigations
In April 2010 a criminal complaint was filed by victims of sexual abuse by four men who were once devoted followers of Karadima. The Public Ministry appointed Xavier Armendáriz as special prosecutor and he promised an unbiased investigation.
The Reverend Hans Kast testified that he had witnessed sexual abuses as did the Reverend Andrés Ferrada "but no one ever did anything about it". The Reverend Francisco Walker, president of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal, resigned from the court after admitting he had leaked the claimants' personal information to Bishop Arteaga and Father Morales.
After seven months of conducting the probe, the court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that there was not enough evidence to charge Karadima. One of the claimants said: "We would have liked to appeal, but with defense attorneys like this, who have the Appeals and Supreme Court eating out of their hands, and a number of powerful people who continue to protect Karadima, we knew it would be an uphill battle that we were likely to lose".
In response to the public accusations, Chilean church officials conducted their own investigation and in June 2010 submitted a 700-page report to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). While that report was under consideration, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Errázuriz and named Ricardo Ezzati Andrello to succeed him as Archbishop of Santiago de Chile. On 16 January 2011 the CDF found Karadima guilty of abusing minors and sentenced him to a life of "prayer and penance", which the Vatican described as "a lifelong prohibition from the public exercise of any ministerial act, particularly confession and the spiritual guidance of any category of persons". His forced retirement included relocation to a place where he will not have contact with previous parishioners or anyone he mentored. On 18 February, Archbishop Ezzati made the decision public. Karadima continued to maintain his innocence. Ezzati announced on 22 June that the CDF had rejected Karadima's appeal and confirmed its original judgment. Ezzati said "there is no place in the priesthood for those who abuse minors and this confirms the vision of the Church in this case. Karadima acknowledged the judgment with his signature, but said Ezzati's "inner convictions are personal". At the time Karadima was living in Providencia in a religious convent.
One of Chile's highest-ranking prelates, long-retired Cardinal Jorge Medina expressed doubts that Karadima could be properly convicted of "sexual abuse" because "A 17-year-old youngster knows what he is doing." He defended the canonical sanctions imposed on Karadima, given his age and merits. One of Karadima's accusers called the cardinal's remark about 17-year-olds "an unwarranted attack". Another said he regarded Medina's statements as "extremely suspicious, as if he wanted to diminish the outline of these grave actions, reducing the issue to homosexuality in a very silly manner, as if, furthermore, homosexuality and abuse were synonymous". The statements, he said, "were an attempt to free from responsibility someone who took advantage of his position of power over more vulnerable persons".
Karadima bishops Karadima had been influential in the spiritual formation and careers of about 50 priests and several bishops. The bishops who were accused of complicity with Karadima, and their posts when the charges against Karadima became public, were: , Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago de Chile and Vice-Chancellor of the Universidad Católica de Chile; Juan Barros Madrid, Military Bishop of Chile; , Bishop of Linares, Chile; Horacio Valenzuela, Bishop of Talca, Chile.
In March 2011, a few weeks after the Vatican's determination of Karadima's guilt was announced, Arteaga stepped down from his position at the Universidad Católica. The university's student union (Federación de Estudiantes de la UC) had urged his removal. A year earlier he had expressed complete support for Karadima. He only reluctantly expressed support for the Vatican action against Karadima, referring in his statement to those "affected" rather than "victims". Arteaga himself had been accused by José Andrés Murillo of ignoring his complaints and recommending a visit with a psychiatrist, "that it was all a misunderstanding of mine, that I should not continue saying those things about Karadima, they had very good lawyers". Arteaga remains an Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago de Chile, though by May 2018 he no longer played a public role because of health problems.
In 2018, Pope Francis accepted the resignations of Barros and Valenzuela. During the same year, however, it was reported that Errázuriz was the leader of the cover-up of Karadima's abuse. Of the four bishops who were accused of complicity when the accusations started, only Arteaga was named as a witness in a complaint which was filed against Errázuriz as well.
Ongoing controversy In 2013 and 2014, Ezzati and his predecessor Errazuriz coordinated their efforts to prevent Juan Carlos Cruz, one of Karadima's victims and accusers, from being appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. When their correspondence was made public in September 2015, advocates for victims of abuse called for Ezzati's resignation or removal. It was reported that Cruz, along with Jesse Hamilton and José Andrés Murillo, brought forth a lawsuit which forced the office of Santiago's Archbishop to pay all three men 450 million pesos (US$650,000) in damages. The Court of Appeals later denied the ruling took place and that the lawsuit was still ongoing; but it ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on March 27, 2019, and ordered the Archdiocese of Santiago to pay them 100 million pesos (about US$147,000) .
On March 28, 2019, it was announced that Errázuriz was named as a defendant in an ongoing investigation and had testified before prosecutors.The Washington Post On April 20, 2019, he was once again testified. During this testimony, Errázuriz spent 12 hours answering questions from lead sex abuse prosecutor Jorge Escobar, but remained silent at times and often replied "I don't remember." He also alleged that child molestation starts as "progress," followed by "psychological deformation" and then eventually a crime.
Evidence of sex abuse coverup In 2018, a 2009 email which Errázuriz wrote to then Apostolic Nuncio to Chile Archbishop Giuseppe Pinto and which was made public during the lawsuit revealed Errázuriz's role in covering up growing allegations of sexual abuse against Karadima. "The presentation of the allegations to the promotor of justice normally calms the aggression of the accusers", Errázuriz wrote. "With respect to F. Karadima I didn't ask the promotor to interrogate him; I only asked Monsignor Andrés Arteaga for his opinion. He considered everything absolutely implausible. Since this was about facts that were time-barred [by the statute of limitations], I closed the investigation. That's how I chose to protect them, conscious that the way I acted, if the accusers at some point brought the case to the media, would turn against me". A complaint which was filed by Cruz, Murillo and Hamilton on October 25, 2018, named Errázuriz as the leader of the cover-up of sexual abuse committed by Karadima. The complaint also named Ezzati, Pinto, Arteaga and Chilean Minister of the Court of Appeals Juan Manuel Muñoz as witnesses. However, a sex abuse cover-up investigation was also launched against Diego Ossa, who was one Karadima's 40 personal priests.
Barros appointment to Osorno