VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press
January 14, 2019
By Nicole Winfield
A delegation of Chilean bishops met Monday with Pope Francis a year after he threw his papacy into turmoil by defending a Chilean bishop accused of covering for a notorious sexual predator.
The five-member permanent committee of the Chilean bishops’ conference requested Monday’s meeting to brief Francis on its efforts to address the clergy sex abuse crisis in the South American country and chart a future course.
“It’s a long process,” the secretary-general of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Fernando Ramos, told reporters after the meeting, which included lunch and lasted for nearly three hours. “All institutions in Chile have lost a lot of credibility, the church included, not just for cultural reasons but because of our own sins and crimes that were committed inside the church.”
The pope’s January 2018 trip to Chile fueled a crisis of confidence in the Chilean Church and the Vatican hierarchy, given the mounting claims of sex abuse and cover-up that were dismissed for years.
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