Chilean Protests: Bishop Juan Barros’ Defense Not Convincing

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Message to Francis: No mitres for men like this

Message to Francis: No mitres for men like this

CNA does some small damage control on Pope Francis’ new Chilean bishop whom thousands reject.

Santiago, Chile, Mar 24, 2015 / 05:11 pm (CNA).- A group of protesters attempted to stop the installation of Bishop Juan Barros Madrid as the new bishop of Osorno in southern Chile, pushing the bishop and throwing objects at him during the March 21 Mass.

The protestors accuse Bishop Barros of covering up sexual abuse committed by Fr. Fernando Karadima. The bishop has repeatedly denied it. The story was picked up this weekend by international news media.

Despite somewhat violent protests in the middle of his installation, the new bishop defends his ignorance.

Bishop Juan Barros and three other bishops close to Karadima supported the decision of the Holy See in April of 2011 and denied having known about his double life. They declared in a statement that “with great sorrow we have accepted the sentence declaring him guilty of serious offences condemned by the Church. Like so many, we learned about this situation and its diverse and multiple effects with deep astonishment and pain.”

In a letter addressed to the faithful of the Osorno diocese days before his installation, Bishop Barros reiterated that “I never had any knowledge of any accusation concerning Father Karadima when I was the Secretary for Cardinal Juan Francisco Fresno and I never had any knowledge nor did I even imagine such grave abuses as this priest committed against his victims. I neither approved nor participated in those actions.”

This is a generic denial.  I wonder if the angry locals have a different story?

“I am telling you, before God who is listening to us, it did not cross my mind that these things were going on. I would not have accepted it for any reason, and I am not a friend of Fernando Karadima,” he stated.

He added that before the Vatican convicted him in 2011, “I was already becoming distant from him. Of course I had been close, but I was already becoming distant from him, not because I knew about these questions of the accusations but because he became ill tempered.  I never knew about these very tragic things. The pain of the victims hurts me enormously, I pray for those that carry this pain with them today.”

He’s not my friend? We had been close, but I was already becoming distant around the time of the occurrences because he was getting mean?

How does this sound?  Odd?  Yes.

Pope Francis already has a track record of ignoring the protests of faithful Catholics and their bishops and priests.  I wonder what sort of people these protesters are?

 

 

Go, My Son And Stomp Out Those Chilean Pharisees!

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Don’t let all those rigid vicious lawmakers get you down!

The Eponymous Flower laments:

There was once a time when Catholics would reject an unworthy ordinary by force.

Hundreds of demonstrators dressed in black barged into a cathedral in a city in southern Chile on Saturday and interrupted the installation ceremony for the city’s new Roman Catholic bishop, Juan Barros, whom they accuse of complicity in a notorious case of clerical sexual abuse, blocking his passage and shouting, “Barros, get out of the city!”

The scene inside the Cathedral San Mateo de Osorno was chaotic, with television images showing clashes between Barros opponents, carrying black balloons, and Barros supporters, carrying white ones. Radio reports said several protesters tried to climb onto the altar where Bishop Barros was standing. After the ceremony, he left the cathedral through a side door escorted by police special forces. Outside, about 3,000 people, including local politicians and members of Congress, held signs and chanted demands that he resign.

How does the Pope defend this bishop’s appointment in the face of such scandal and outrage?  Is there no statement, no indication of any change?  Isn’t this the People’s Pope, close to the poor, the outcast, the suffering, and the little guy?

Weeks of protests, candlelight vigils and letters to Pope Francis were not enough to persuade him to rescind his decision in January to appoint Bishop Barros to lead the Diocese of Osorno, 570 miles south of the capital, Santiago. Bishop Barros was a close associate of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a prominent Santiago priest whom the Vatican found guilty of sexual abuse in 2011. Father Karadima, now 84, was ordered to retire to a “life of prayer and penitence.”

How many such bishops do we suffer with every day around the world and make no peep of protest? Does the FrancisChurch care what kind of depravity and oppression they foist on us in the name of ‘going forward, ever forward?’

Will this Bishop Barros be a force for good in his diocese or a destroyer of it?  Who am I to judge?