ROME(ITALY)
Crux
April 9, 2019
By Inés San Martín
Acting as the interim replacement for a cardinal subpoenaed by civil prosecutors for alleged sex abuse cover-ups, and facing questions about his own record in responding to abuse charges, the new man in Santiago, Chile, says he’s got only one “pastoral proposal,” and it’s expressed in his motto as a bishop: “To serve and to love.”
“What worries us is not the money [that the archdiocese will have to pay to survivors of clerical abuse], but how can we help those victims heal, and above all, we want to guarantee that they, and everyone else, helps us build a different future where these things don’t happen again,” said Bishop Celestino Aos, named March 23 as the apostolic administrator of Santiago following the resignation of Cardinal Riccardo Ezzati.
“How could we let these things happen… things I didn’t even dream could happen, and that do,” Aos told reporters. “What can we do to guarantee that they don’t happen again?”
Aos’s nomination amounts to the latest twist in a long-running attempted cleanup of Church leadership in Chile, which Francis set in motion in May, when he summoned all the bishops to Rome.
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