Embattled Chilean Bishop Defends Himself, Insisting He Was Unaware of Abuse

Catholic Culture
October 27, 2015

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=26533

Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Chile, has issued a statement repeating his insistence that he was not aware of sexual abuse by a priest who had been his friend.

In a statement read at Mass in all parishes of the Osorno diocese on October 26, Bishop Barros said that he has been unjustly accused of covering up misconduct by Father Fernando Karadima, a notorious abuser. At least three of Karadima’s victims have charged that the future bishop knew about the abuse at the time it occurred. Bishop Barros has consistently said that he was unaware of the abuse much alter.

Earlier this month Pope Francis—who had courted controversy by appointing Bishop Barros to the Osorno diocese—defended that appointment in unusually blunt terms, saying that the accusations against the bishop were “unfounded allegations of the leftists,” and lamenting that many people in the Osorno diocese had been “carried away by the garbage.”