Ezzati in the final straight: the secrets of his record that the Pope has in his hands today

THE FOOTPRINT OF EZZATI

Although the name of Ezzati was badociated with the concealment of abuse mainly in the Karadima case, the subject has existed since the He was then director of the Salesian congregation and intervened, according to the accusations of the victims, to silence the denunciations that arose in Valdivia against the aggressor of the miners Rimsky Rojas .

. Left Chile then Punta Arenas, Rojas became rector of a Salesian college in the capital of Magellan and it is suspected that he was involved in the disappearance of the student Ricardo Harex, 17 years old , in 2001. The religious committed suicide in 2011. One of his victims in Valdivia, lawyer Marcelo Vargas, earlier this year handed Archbishop Charles Scicluna over Ezzati's ties with concealment Rimsky Rojas' crimes

The subject of abuses again touched Ezzati when he was Archbishop of Conce C & # 39; s position he occupied between 2006 and 2011. In 2008, the rector of Salesian Salesian School Audín Araya mistreated two minors. The congregation discovered in December of this year and kept the facts subject, transferring Araya to Puerto Montt, where he ran another school of the order. Without the support of the church, the families of the victims lodged a complaint in the criminal justice system in 2011. In 2014, Audín Araya was sentenced to two years in prison and lifelong disqualified for holding positions in the community. field of education.

Fernando Karadima

Newcomer to the Archdiocese of Concepción, Ricardo Ezzati was alerted in 2006 by a nun. "Abusive behavior" of a group of homobadual priests, including the priest Hernán Enríquez Rosas. The religious asked him to separate them from pastoral and educational work with the youth, but not Ezzati. Three years later, in 2009, the Penarchist archbishop of the time received a complaint against Enríquez, in which he was accused of having raped a 14 year old at the Petit Séminaire de Concepción in 2002 So only began an investigation, which was closed without conclusive results. Enriquez continued as a Chaplain of Schools and Professor at the Catholic University of Penquista. Despite this context, Ezzati wrote in 2012 a prologue for a book of the accused priest

A year later, in 2013, Ezzati was already in charge of the Archdiocese of Santiago and presided over the Episcopal Conference. Karadima had been convicted and typed operations within the archdiocese were obvious to discredit his victims, who denounced the concealment that the church offered to the former parish priest. In this context, the then bishop of Rancagua, Alejandro Goic, who chaired the National Commission for the Prevention of Abuse, wrote a letter to Ricardo Ezzati, recently seized by the prosecutor Emiliano Arias and disclosed to the press

. He never sent the letter because he spoke directly with Ezzati. The letter is a harsh reproach to Ezzati for the treatment he offered to the victims:

The letter also acknowledges the concealment given to clerical abuses:

"Yesterday – we did not have the Today's conscience – we kept in silence these abuses of minors, we said that they were human weaknesses, he was transferred to other places to these priests. "

And that is precisely what happened in the cases of Rimsky Rojas and Audín Araya, with whom he is related to Ricardo Ezzati

The most eloquent point of the # 39, animosity towards the victims of Karadina was the emails exchanged by Ezzati and Errázuriz, published in 2015 by El Mostrador in which the two cardinals coordinated to prevent one of the plaintiffs, Juan Carlos Cruz , be received at the Vatican.

Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz has his own record of abuse. In 2002, he presided over the Episcopal Conference when the emeritus bishop of La Serena, Francisco José Cox left the country not to face multiple complaints of badual abuse against minors. Cox, a member of the same congregation Errázuriz (parents of Schoenstatt), is one of the paradigmatic cases of hidden abuse: he was removed from the archbishop of La Serena, bury the charges laid against him and allowed to move to Germany. The declaration signed by Errázuriz then president of the episcopate, when the escape of Cox in Europe was known is an emblem of euphemism:

But the episodes most Serious Cardinal Errázuriz 's concealment has occurred in the Karadima case. In 2003 he received the letter with the denunciation of one of the victims, José Andrés Murillo, but he did nothing. In 2012, the cardinal declared The New York Times that this accusation " unfortunately, I did not consider it credible ."

In 2004, the cardinal heard the statements that María Verónica Miranda, wife of another victim of Karadima, James Hamilton, made before the promoter of justice of the Archdiocese. Two years later, in 2006, Hamilton himself and Juan Carlos Cruz gave their testimony to the promoter. With three testimonies of direct victims – Murillo, Hamilton and Cruz – Cardinal Errázuriz was forced to open an investigation, but he delayed the process until 2009 and only removed Karadima from the post of pastor. Church El Bosque.

2010, seven years after receiving the first complaint and only when the victims gave their testimony to TVN Special Report the cardinal decided to send the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Criminal, Karadima said that Erzáziz was protecting him and that he had paid 500 million dollars to stop a book accusing the cardinal of pedophilia.

In October 2015, a month after the emails between Ezzati and Errázuriz were known, the latter presented his testimony in the civil lawsuit brought by the victims of Karadima against him and the church. He then testified that when he heard the allegations, he "misrepresented" them because "they arrived without evidence" and "it was difficult to equate adults who had been abused for years without denounce him ".