PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Blade
PHILADELPHIA — A Vatican spokesperson on Sunday declined to comment on the controversy surrounding the two Chilean cardinals who conspired to block a gay man’s nomination to a sex abuse commission that Pope Francis created.
“I have no intention to enter the discussion that has taken place in Chile,” Rev. Federico Lombardi told the Washington Blade during his daily press briefing at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.
El Mostrador, a Chilean newspaper, on Sept. 9 published a series of private emails between Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, the archbishop of Santiago, and his predecessor, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, in which they discussed Juan Carlos Cruz’s nomination to the commission and their efforts to block it.
The emails indicate the cardinals, among other things, described Cruz as a “serpent.” Ezzati and Errázuriz, one of eight cardinals who advises Francis on reforming the Curia that oversees the church, also sought to prevent Cruz from speaking about sex abuse to a group of English-speaking bishops in Rome.
Cruz is among the hundreds of people who Rev. Fernando Karadima sexually abused in his parish in the Chilean capital over more than three decades.
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