Archbishop Lefebvre ora pro nobis!
The disastrous appointment of Bishop Barros hand-picked by Bergoglio is not going away!!
Once again Protesters occupy cathedral of Chilean bishop charged
with covering up abuse!
Around 1,300 laymen, 30 priests and
almost half of Parliament wrote to Bergoglio last year asking him to replace
Madrid.
Barros cannot cry ignorance, he was in the room where the sexual abuse took place!!
“This man
[Barros] was standing next to us when we were abused,” Juan Carlos Cruz told
CNN Chile. “Juan Barros is a bad man for many reasons. I find it incredible
that he is taking over a diocese like Osorno.”
A second
victim, James Hamilton, has also testified that he saw Barros in the room while
the abuse took place. “This is who gets named to be bishop of Osorno? For those
of us who know the truth of this story – and apparently the Vatican also know –
this it is unbelievable,” he told CNN.
ROME — Laypeople in Chile opposed to Pope Francis’
appointment of a bishop with ties to the country’s most notorious abuser priest
have occupied the local cathedral, demanding the bishop’s resignation.
The
demonstration came on Saturday, the anniversary of the day Pope Francis
announced the appointment one year ago.“We’re Catholics who oppose the pastoral exercise of Bishop [Juan de la Cruz]
Barros,” the group, which calls itself the “Lay Men and Women of Osorno,” write
in a statement issued Saturday night.
Osorno is a small diocese in southern Chile with a
Catholic population of roughly 125,000.
Francis appointed Barros its bishop in
January 2015. On Saturday, Osorno’s Cathedral of St. Matthew was
occupied by some 30 people carrying signs demanding Barros’s resignation.
On the same
day, Pope Francis welcomed the top three representatives of the Chilean
Catholic hierarchy to the Vatican, presumably, in part, to discuss the
controversy around Barros.
The choice of Barros a year ago sparked nationwide protest, since he’s
been accused of concealing sexual abuse allegations against the Rev. Fernando
Karadima, a well-known local priest with strong ties to the country’s elite. In
2011,
Karadima
was sentenced by the Vatican to a life of “penance and prayer” after being
found guilty of pedophilia and abuse of his ecclesiastical position.
Victims of Karadima have accused Barros and three
other Chilean bishops — Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic, and Horacio
Valenzuela — of covering up for Karadima while he sexually abused followers
during the 1980s and 1990s.
The four bishops have defended their mentor and tried
to discredit the victims, even after the Vatican determined the accusations had
merit. However, there’s been no confirmation of any formal charges against the
bishops for concealing crimes, either under the Church’s canon law or Chilean
civil law.
In their statement, the protesters described their
takeover of the cathedral as a “liturgical occupation.”
They accused the papal ambassador in
Chile, Italian Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, and the local hierarchy of “negotiating”
away their diocese, and requested a meeting to have an “open, fraternal, and
power-free” dialogue.
The solution to this “grave crisis,”
they wrote, will come only with Barros’s resignation.
“Because we’re a part of the people
of God, despite the suffering caused by not being heard and [being] abandoned,
we manifest yet again our option for dialogue,” they wrote.
Barros was installed in the diocese
last March, in a ceremony that had to be cut short because of protests. While
the bishop was celebrating the Mass, many in attendance screamed “pedophile”
and “get out!” at Barros, who had served as Chile’s military chaplain prior to
the transfer to Osorno.
Politician Fidel Espinoza, right, and
fellow Chileans protest as Bishop Juan Barros conducts his first service as
bishop in Osorno cathedral, south of Santiago. Photo - Reuters
Around 1,300 laymen, 30 priests and almost half of
Parliament wrote to Bergoglio last year to make clear to him that they did not
want Barros as their bishop!
In
a video making the rounds on social media, filmed during a Mass before
the occupation of the cathedral on Saturday, a woman is seen asking the bishop
to resign.
“Please go away, make no more damage, so that this
church can finally be united,” a woman who approached Barros during Communion
tells him. “God bless you,” was his response, to which she says, “Yes, but you
leave Osorno.”
In the background, a second person, presumably the one
holding the camera, keeps asking, “Juan Carlos Cruz, do you remember the name Juan
Carlos Cruz?”
Cruz is one of Karadima’s victims, and together with
James Hamilton and Fernando Batlle , is currently battling the Chilean Church in
court, asking for $700,000 in compensation.
“In this Jubilee Year of Mercy, we ask: When will there be
mercy for Osorno?” the protesters
wrote in their manifesto.
Since the appointment of Barros, Church officials have
been mostly quiet. The man behind the appointment however, hasn’t. In a video
released last October (but filmed in St. Peter’s Square five months earlier),
Pope Francis accused critics of “foolishness.”
With no prompting, Francis tells Jaime Coiro, a former
spokesman of the Chilean bishops, that the local Church in Chile has “lost its
head,” allowing a group of politicians to judge a bishop “with no proof
whatsoever.”
“Think with the head, don’t be led around by the nose
by these leftists who are the ones who put this [opposition] together,” the
pope is heard saying.
The “leftists” to whom Francis referred are presumably
51 members of Chile’s Congress, most from the Socialist government of President
Michelle Bachelet, who signed a petition opposing Barros’s nomination.
Regarding the accusations against the four bishops,
the pontiff said in the video that they were “dismissed by the judicial
courts.”
“I am the first one to judge and punish someone who’s
being accused of these things, but in this case, there’s no proof. On the
contrary,” Francis said in the video. “From the heart, I tell you. Let’s see if
you help me with this, but don’t be led by the nose by these who’re trying to
create a havoc, that are looking for slander.”
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