You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (April 2015)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
The case of Fernando Karadima concerned the sexual abuse of minors in Chile, which became public in 2010. It raised questions about the responsibility and complicity of several Chilean bishops, including some of the country's highest-ranking Catholic prelates. By 2018, it attracted worldwide attention.
Fernando Karadima (6 August 1930 – 26 July 2021 [1] [2] ), a Chilean Catholic priest, was accused as early as 1984 of sexually abusing adolescent boys. Years later, when a church investigator found the accusers credible, his superior, the Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, took no action against him. Karadima's accusers made their charges public in 2010. The Chilean Catholic Church completed a thorough investigation of the charges that year, and in February 2011 the Vatican found Karadima guilty of sexually abusing minors and psychological abuse. It forced him into retirement, relocated him away from contact with former parishioners and followers, and denied him the right to function as a priest for the rest of his life. Civil legal action against him was thwarted by the statute of limitations.
Karadima had been influential in the spiritual formation and careers of dozens of priests and several bishops. Karadima's accusers charged those bishops and other high-ranking prelates had failed to investigate their claims of sexual abuse and had endangered the minors in their care. When the Vatican found Karadima guilty, one of the bishops associated with him, Andrés Arteaga , resigned from his position as Vice-Chancellor of the Universidad Católica de Chile. Two others remained as heads of their dioceses, positions they had held since 1996 in one case and 2003 in the other. In 2015, the attempt to install the fourth, Juan Barros Madrid, as Bishop of Osorno, became a multi-year battle, first confined to Chile, but eventually drawing the attention of the Vatican and worldwide media coverage.
Fernando Karadima 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 dictatorship of 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." [3] [4] He trained 50 priests and several bishops.
In 1984 a group of parishioners reported "improper conduct" on the part of Karadima to Juan Francisco Fresno, Archbishop of Santiago de Chile. [lower-alpha 1] One of them later told a court that he learned that their letter was "torn up and thrown away". [5] Fresno's secretary at the time was one of Karadima's protégés, Juan Barros. [6]
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 suggested 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." [5] [7]
In April 2010 four men once-devoted followers of Karadima filed a criminal complaint. The Public Ministry appointed Xavier Armendáriz as special prosecutor and he promised an unbiased investigation. [8]
Reverend Hans Kast testified that he had witnessed sexual abuse, as did the Reverend Andrés Ferrada "but no one ever did anything about it". [5] 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. [5]
After seven months of investigation, the court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that there was not enough evidence to charge Karadima. One claimant said: "We would have liked to appeal, but with defence 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". [9] [lower-alpha 2]
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. [11] 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. [12]
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. [13] [14] One of Karadima's accusers called the cardinal's remark about 17-year-olds "an unwarranted attack". [15] 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". [16]
The four bishops who were accused of complicity with Karadima, and their posts when the charges against Karadima became public, were:
Bishop Arteaga stepped down from his position at the Universidad Catolica in March 2011. 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". [7] He remains an Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago de Chile, though by May 2018 he no longer played a public role because of health problems. [22]
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. [23]
Pope Francis appointed Barros Bishop of Osorno, Chile, a small diocese with 23 parishes, on 10 January 2015. Local protests and candlelight vigils and a petition to the papal nuncio on the part of 30 priests and deacons of the diocese were unsuccessful in blocking Barros' appointment, as was a letter signed by 51 members of the National Congress. [4] In 2018 Francis ordered a new investigation, and in April a 2,300-page report provided all the evidence he needed to remove Barros—and to recognize that he had been given bad advice on the case. Francis reversed his position, apologizing to victims of abuse, and undertaking a wholesale review of the Church in Chile. [24]
When Francis met with 34 Chilean bishops in May 2018, he asked the bishops to review the state of the Church and the root causes of the crisis. The Karadima case and that of the bishops associated with him were seen as part of a broader corrupt and self-serving culture. Francis described the need to deepen their review to "the sexual abuse of minors, of the abuses of power, and of the abuses of conscience". He identified the bishops with "the psychology of the elite" that "ends by generating dynamics of division, separation, closed circles that result in a narcissistic and authoritarian spirituality" and warned that "Messianism, elitism and clericalism are all symptoms of this perversion in a way of being church." [25] At the conclusion, all the active bishops and auxiliaries submitted their resignations in writing. [26] [27] Barros's and Valenzuela's were among the resignations which Pope Francis accepted. [28]
By July 2018, Artega and Maroevic, whose resignations were not yet accepted, were not listed on Bishop-Accountability.org as being accused of any cover-up. [29] However, Errázuriz still was listed. [29]
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 had prescribed [past 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, it would turn against me." [30]
A complaint which was filed on October 25, 2018, by three victims of Karadima named Errázuriz as the leader of the coverup of acts of sexual abuse committed by the former priest. [31] The complaint also named Ezzati, Pinto, Arteaga, and Chilean Minister of the Court of Appeals Juan Manuel Muñoz as witnesses to it as well. [31]
Antonio Delfau, a Jesuit priest in Santiago, said in 2011 that the Vatican decision on Karadima's guilt "is going to mark a before and after in the way the Chilean Catholic Church proceeds in cases like these, or at least it should", and "From now on, every case of sexual abuse must be treated with meticulous care and not be based on the gut feeling of a given church official." [32] Chilean political analyst Ascanio Cavallo , Dean of the Journalism School of the Adolfo Ibáñez University, called the Karadima case "the worst scandal of the Chilean Catholic Church". He said: "The abuses were not possible without a network of political, social and religious power working for 50 years. The assassination of René Schneider ... bears traces of the network". He said that "Karadima built a parallel church in the 1980s and 1990s to satisfy a very specific sector of Santiago's society. This para-church [paraiglesia] was the platform of the prevailing positions that damaged the prestige of the institution since 2000". [33] [ dead link ]
On 28 September 2018, Pope Francis laicized Karadima. [34] It is believed that he lived in a care home in Santiago. [35] [36]
On 21 October 2018, it was reported that Chile's Court of Appeal ordered the office of Santiago's Archbishop to pay 450 million pesos ($650,000) to three men who stated that Karadima sexually abused them for decades. [37] [38] The three claimants in this lawsuit against the Archdiocese were James Hamilton, José Andrés Murillo and Juan Carlos Cruz, [38] [37] who was one of Karadima's most high-profile victims. [39] Dobra Lusic, the President of the Court of Appeals, stated on October 22 that the lawsuit was still ongoing and that no verdict has been reached. [40] On 27 March 2019, the Court of Appeals ordered the Archdiocese to pay 100 million pesos (about US$147,000) for "moral damages" to each of the survivors: Juan Carlos Cruz, José Andrés Murillo and James Hamilton. [41] The ruling was confirmed by their lawyer Juan Pablo Hermosilla and Santiago Bishop Celestino Aos on March 28. [42] It was announced that Errázuriz was named as a defendant in an ongoing investigation and had testified before prosecutors. [43] [44]
On 1 November 2018, it was revealed that Cruz, Hamilton and Murillo had filed a complaint against Errazuriz on October 25 which accused him of perjury in the civil suit for compensation for damages filed against the Archdiocese of Santiago. [31] On 15 November 2018, Errazuriz announced that he was no longer a member of the Council of Cardinals, which serves as the Pope's advisory committee, [45] claiming that Pope Francis accepted his resignation after serving the Vatican's five-year term limit. [46] [47] However, it has been acknowledged that just as Errazuriz announced his resignation, a Chilean prosecutor announced that he had been summoned to testify. [46] [47] [45]
In January 2019, the Vatican opened a criminal investigation against Karadima's "right-hand man" Diego Ossa, removed from ministry in August 2018 after being accused of committing two acts of sex abuse and covering up acts of sex abuse committed in 2005. [48] [49] [50] Ossa faced three counts of sexual and power abuse. [51] Ossa, who served in the El Señor de Renca parish and was later named as vicar in a Ñuñoa parish, [50] died in April 2020 of pancreatic cancer before a verdict could be reached in the Vatican. [51] News of his death received mixed reaction from his complainants. [52] By the time of his death, the Vatican investigation against Ossa also revealed an email between Cardinal Errázuriz and Ossa where Errázuriz agreed to transfer to him settlement money so he could pay off one of his complainants, Óscar Osbén. [52] On 16 April 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith posthumously found Ossa guilty of sexual abuse and of abuse of conscience of another of his followers and in death, gave him a symbolic sentence of five years of deprivation of all ecclesiastical office. [53] [54]
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
Angelo Raffaele Sodano, GCC was an Italian Catholic prelate and from 1991 onward a cardinal. He was the Dean of the College of Cardinals from 2005 to 2019 and Cardinal Secretary of State from 1991 to 2006; Sodano was the first person since 1828 to serve simultaneously as Dean and Secretary of State.
Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa is a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Santiago from 1998 to 2010. He has been a cardinal since 2001 and was a member of Pope Francis' Council of Cardinal Advisers from its creation in 2013 until his departure in 2018.
Jorge Arturo Agustín Medina Estévez was a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church who held senior positions both in his native country and in the Roman Curia. He was prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 1996 to 2002 and was made a cardinal in 1998. Beginning in 1985 he served as auxiliary bishop and then from 1987 bishop of Rancagua and then bishop of Valparaíso from 1993 to 1996.
The Catholic Church in Chile is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope, the curia in Rome, and the Episcopal Conference of Chile.
The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile is one of the five Latin metropolitan sees of the Catholic Church in Chile.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of La Serena is an archdiocese located in the city of La Serena in Chile.
Marcial Maciel was the founding leader of the Legion of Christ, then based in Mexico, and its general director from 1941 to January 2005. Since the 1970s the prominent Mexican Roman Catholic priest had sexually abused at least 60 minors." and fathered six children by three women. Described as a charismatic leader and the "greatest fundraiser of the modern Roman Catholic church", he was successful in recruiting seminarians at a time of declining priestly vocations. Maciel was the "highest ranking priest ever disciplined because of sexual abuse allegations."
Enrique Alvear Urrutia was a Chilean Roman Catholic prelate who served as the Bishop of San Felipe from 1965 until 1974 when he was made one of the two auxiliaries for the Santiago de Chile archdiocese. He was a vocal critic during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and braved potential detention and death threats to condemn human rights abuses and other atrocities the regime undertook.
Ricardo Ezzati Andrello is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who has lived and worked in Chile since the age of 17. He was Archbishop of Santiago from December 2010 to March 2019 and has been a cardinal since February 2014. He previously served as Archbishop of Concepción. He headed the Episcopal Conference of Chile from 2010 to 2016.
Francisco José Cox Huneeus was a native of Chile and a former archbishop of the Catholic Church. He was a member of the Schoenstatt Movement. He was Bishop of Chillán from 1975 to 1981 and Coadjutor Archbishop of La Serena from 1985 to 1990 and Archbishop there from 1990 to 1997, when he resigned following accusations that he had sexually abused young boys. He was laïcized in 2018.
Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid is a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church. He was Bishop of Osorno from 2015 to 2018. He was Auxiliary Bishop of Valparaíso from 1995 to 2000, Bishop of Iquique from 2000 to 2004, and Military Ordinary of Chile from 2004 to 2015.
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.
Marco Antonio Órdenes Fernández is a native of Chile and a former prelate of the Catholic Church. He was Bishop of Iquique from 2006 to 2012. When appointed at the age of 42, he was the youngest bishop in the history of Chile. Accusations that he had sexually abused minors forced his resignation in 2012. Civil procedures concluded when prosecutors could not establish a case against him, but church proceedings ended with his removal from the clerical state in 2018.
Horacio del Carmen Valenzuela Abarca is a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church, who was Bishop of Talca from 1996 to 2018.
Cristián Caro Cordero is a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church who was Archbishop of Puerto Montt from 2001 to June 2018.
Gonzalo Duarte García de Cortázar is a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church who was Bishop of Valparaíso from 1998 to June 2018. Product of it, he also was the Great Chancellor of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, his alma mater.
Ivo Scapolo is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who has worked in the diplomatic service of the Holy See since 1984, and has served as nuncio in Bolivia, Rwanda, Chile and Portugal. He has been an archbishop since 2002.
Alberto Ricardo Lorenzelli Rossi, S.D.B. is an Argentina-born priest of the Catholic Church who has been appointed auxiliary bishop of Santiago, Chile. He is a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco and has held positions of administrative responsibility within that order in both Chile and Italy.
Andrés Gabriel Ferrada Moreira is a Chilean archbishop of the Catholic Church. Since 8 September 2021 he has been the Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy, where he had worked since 2018. From 2006 to 2018 he worked in his native diocese of Santiago de Chile.
...formó parte del Movimiento Apostólico Juvenil en la Parroquia Sagrado Corazón de El Bosque, donde el servicio generoso a los demás maduró su vocación al sacerdocio.
... es el peor escándalo de la Iglesia chilena ...
... El otro problema pendiente es el del poder, que es el verdadero centro del caso del ex párroco. Los abusos de Karadima no habrían sido posibles sin la constitución de una red de poder político, social y religioso como la que funcionó por casi medio siglo en la parroquia El Bosque. Se hallan rastros de esa red hasta sucesos tan remotos como el asesinato del comandante en jefe del Ejército, general René Schneider, ejecutado para evitar la asunción de Salvador Allende, "demonio" de la política para muchos de sus miembros. ...
... El hecho cierto es que Karadima llegó a construir una Iglesia paralela a la de Santiago durante los años 80 y 90, que satisfizo los deseos de un sector muy específico de la sociedad santiaguina. Esa paraiglesia formó la plataforma para las posiciones dominantes que deterioraron el prestigio de toda la institución a partir de los 2000.