SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Los Angeles Times
By Jorge Poblete and Chris Kraul
The offices of the Roman Catholic diocese in Chillan, a small agricultural city in southern Chile, recently had some unusual and unexpected visitors: Chilean prosecutor Emiliano Arias and 10 armed police officers.
Arias walked briskly past the receptionist and climbed the stairs to the third floor, entering a green walled room dominated by a large framed photo of a smiling Pope John Paul II, who visited Chile in 1987.
After exchanging a few words with nervous church staff members and explaining his mission, Arias and police immediately began going over personnel records stored in file cabinets along one wall in the next office.
Currently, more than 190 people across Chile are being investigated for alleged sexual abuse and cover-ups linked to the Roman Catholic Church, including 113 priests and nine bishops, according to the Chilean national prosecutor’s office.
Of 251 victims, at least 109 were minors as young as 5 years old when they were abused, dating back to the 1940s. The number of cases under investigation has risen from a year ago when 83 people were being investigated in the alleged abuse of 162 people between 2000 and 2017.
Arias and his team were looking for evidence in the cases of eight priests from the Chillan diocese, including now removed Bishop Carlos Pellegrin, suspected of participating in or covering up the abuse of a dozen youths since the 1970s. While Arias pored over files in the town 250 miles south of Santiago, the capital, three other teams made similar raids on diocesan offices in Valparaiso, Concepcion and Osorno.
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