Pope Francis has defrocked an 88-year-old Chilean priest at the centre of the global sex abuse scandal rocking his papacy.
The pope invoked his “supreme” authority to stiffen a sentence originally handed down by a Vatican court in 2011.
On May 22, 2018, 14 priest involved in a sex abuse scandal in Chile — which has rocked Pope Francis’s papacy — were defrocked … up child abuse by Chilean paedophile priest, Fernando Karadima during the 1980s.
In a statement Friday, the Vatican said Francis had laicized Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was originally sanctioned to live a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for having sexually abused minors in the upscale Santiago parish he ran.
The “penance and prayer” sanction has been the Vatican’s punishment of choice for elderly priests convicted of raping and molesting children. It has long been criticized by victims as too soft and essentially an all-expenses-paid retirement.
The Vatican didn’t say what new evidence, if any, prompted Francis to re-evaluate Karadima’s sanction and impose what clergy consider to be the equivalent of a death sentence. It said Francis made the “exceptional decision” for the good of the church, and cited the church canon that lays out the pope’s “supreme, full, immediate and universal power” to serve the church.
The statement said the decree, signed Thursday, takes effect immediately and that Karadima was informed of it Friday.
The decision appeared aimed at showing a get-tough approach to sex abuse after a series of missteps by Francis and accusations by a former Vatican ambassador that Francis had rehabilitated a now-disgraced former American cardinal early on in his papacy.
While the move will be welcomed by Chilean victims as overdue, the decision could spark a religious debate for those who see it as a second punishment for the same crime. Francis’ conservative critics might also bristle at another display of raw papal power from the Argentine Jesuit.
Francis sparked a crisis in his papacy earlier this year when he strongly defended one of Karadima’s proteges, Bishop Juan Barros, against accusations that he had witnessed Karadima’s abuse and ignored it.
(The Salt Lake Tribune)
