VATICAN CITY
Associated Press
By NICOLE WINFIELD
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The retired archbishop of Santiago is denying he covered-up for an abusive priest in Chile, but is acknowledging the priest’s popularity and ability to produce seminarians weighed on his decision-making.
Cardinal Javier Errazuriz wrote a letter May 10 to his fellow bishops defending his handling of the case at the center of Chile’s sex abuse and cover-up scandal. That scandal is at the heart of an emergency summit between Pope Francis and 34 bishops that began Tuesday to try to map a recovery strategy from the crisis that has discredited the Chilean church and tarnished Francis’ own reputation.
In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Errazuriz insisted that he was only following church law in waiting more than five years before launching an investigation into the Rev. Fernando Karadima. Only in 2009, after he received a third complaint from one of Karadima’s young parishioners, did he start the process.
Errazuriz wrote that it had been “difficult” to reach the Vatican-required standard of being convinced that the accusations were “at least likely,” particularly given Karadima’s popularity.
“They were accusing a priest with a great pastoral calling, whose preaching enriched more than 30 young people who were ordained priests and four priests who were consecrated bishops,” Errazuriz wrote. “They also accused a priest who inspired a youth association that propagated his fame.”
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