SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Crux
May 13, 2019
By Inés San Martín
Though arguably it’s not easy being a Catholic bishop anywhere in the world these days, few prelates probably have ever stepped into an inferno quite the way Bishop Celestino Aós Braco of Chile did in March.
Since 2014, Aós had been serving as the bishop of Copiapó, a relatively sleepy diocese in the northern part of the country. Two months ago, however, Francis tapped him to become the apostolic administrator of Santiago, the national capital, which has been ripped apart by clerical abuse scandals and accusations of inaction against the last two archbishops, Cardinals Francisco Errázuriz and Ricardo Ezzati.
Aós, a 74-year-old Capuchin, hasn’t been on the job long, and there’s no guarantee he’ll keep it – as apostolic administrator, in theory he’s only keeping the seat warm until a new archbishop is named.
He may have few of the benefits of the post, but he certainly has all its headaches. Early on, critics pounced on his record as the Promoter of Justice in the Diocese of Valparaíso, Chile, where in 2007 he found “implausible” a complaint of sexual abuse made by a former seminarian against a former rector of a seminary now regarded as having been one of the epicenters of Chile’s abuse crisis.
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