Pope Francis admits 'grave error' in discrediting Chilean church sexual abuse victims

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Pope Francis admits 'grave error' in discrediting Chilean church sexual abuse victims

Associated Press in Santiago
Wed 11 Apr 2018 22.07 BST

Pope Francis has admitted he made “grave errors” in judgment in a clerical sexual abuse scandal in Chile and invited the abuse victims he had discredited to Rome to beg their forgiveness.

In an extraordinary letter published on Wednesday, Francis also summoned all of Chile’s bishops to the Vatican for an emergency summit in the coming weeks to discuss the scandal, which has badly tarnished his reputation and that of the Chilean church.

The Vatican orders up such emergency visits only on rare occasions, when Vatican intervention is urgently required, such as when the clerical sexual abuse scandal exploded in the United States in 2002.

Francis said the meeting, which comes just a year after the Chilean bishops were last in Rome on a regular visit, would have as its objective “repairing scandal where possible and re-establishing justice”.

Francis blamed a lack of “truthful and balanced information” in his missteps in judging the case of Bishop Juan Barros, a protege of Chile’s most notorious predator priest, the Rev Fernando Karadima. Francis had strongly defended Barros during his January visit to Chile, despite accusations by victims that he witnessed and ignored their abuse.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/11/pope-francis-chile-church-sex-abuse-scandal

[trotsky]

1. PR pope understands bad PR.

He'll do everything he can to get back to good PR... except for actually doing something about the problem. Lots of nice words, though.

[guillaumeb]

2. The 11th Commandment immediately in evidence.

[trotsky]

3. You cannot silence those who disagree with you.

No matter how much you try.

[guillaumeb]

4. Another commandment in evidence.

[trotsky]

5. Your unsupported personal opinion is noted. n/t

[marylandblue]

14. Why don't you just say the Pope finally did the right thing?

Pope Francis finally did do the right thing. Better late than never. I hope be actually does do something to protect children in the future.

Isn't that the real issue? Isn't it better to just say what you think about the real issue instead of making everything about what some atheists in some little corner of the Internet think?

[Major Nikon]

15. The Pope always manages to do the right thing when other options become untenable

The reason the Pope is doing the “right thing” is because he got busted one again calling South American nuns who “gossip” “terrorists”. In other words the real reason the RCC is hemorrhaging members in South America isn’t because of child raping priests and those who try to cover up abuse, but whistleblowing nuns.

It’s easy to do the “right thing” when you have no other choice.

“Gossip is like a bomb,” Francis told the nuns gathered at Las Nazarenas, a historic church near Lima’s main square, adding that the best remedy was “biting their tongue.”

“A nun who gossips,” he said, “is a terrorist nun.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/world/americas/pope-francis-peru.html

[marylandblue]

16. Better late than never

And good for the nuns for standing up.

[Major Nikon]

17. Both too little and too late

As has happened so many times in these cases the Pope scuttled the child rapists off to Rome to avoid prosecution and instructed their organization to bankroll their living expenses. The victims then refused to testify knowing full well their rapists would never be brought to justice and instead get to retire comfortably with Catholic money. The statute of limitation is now running out and it will be just another case of the RCC fully supporting child rapists over victims.

Meanwhile the Pope failed to apologize to the courageous nuns who came forward and got labeled as "terrorists" for their trouble. The Pope is effectively offering no more than "thoughts and prayers", and is simply perpetuating a culture that will continue to harm the most helpless victims in the most evil way possible.

[Major Nikon]

9. Arbitrarily violated an arbitrary standard which only you can arbitrate

[guillaumeb]

10. I will arbitrarily dismiss your reply.

[Major Nikon]

11. Too late

[guillaumeb]

12. I missed the arbitrary deadline?

Oh well.

[Major Nikon]

13. Right about the time you hit Reply

[Lordquinton]

6. Does he still have the Fox News guy working for his PR chief?

[trotsky]

7. Of course!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Burke_(journalist)

[Lordquinton]

8. Interesting

But I'm sure iit still means nothing.