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.
In Chile and during an airborne press conference returning to Rome, Francis had accused the victims of “slander” for pressing their case against Barros, demanded they present “proof” of their claims, revealed he had twice rejected Barros’s resignation and insisted: “I am convinced he is innocent.”
After his remarks caused an outcry, Francis sent the Vatican’s most respected sexual abuse investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna to Chile.
Francis said the clergy must now work together to “re-establish confidence in the church, confidence that was broken by our errors and sins, and heal the wounds that continue to bleed in Chilean society”.
Karadima was removed from the ministry by the Vatican for sexually abusing minors and sentenced in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer.
Scicluna and his colleague, the Rev Jordi Bertomeu, spent nearly two weeks in Chile and New York earlier this year interviewing Karadima’s victims, who for years have denounced Barros’s silence.
In his letter, Francis thanked the 64 people who testified and had the courage to bare the “wounds of their souls” for the sake of truth. He said he felt “pain and shame” in reading the 2,300-page dossier his envoys prepared. He said Scicluna and Bertomeu were “overwhelmed by the pain of so many victims”.
“For my part, I recognize and so I want it to be faithfully transmitted that I have incurred grave mistakes of judgment and perception of the situation, especially due to the lack of truthful and balanced information,” Francis wrote. “From now on I ask forgiveness of all those I offended and I hope to be able to do it personally in the coming weeks.”