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ROME – Last Saturday, Pope Francis expelled two retired Chilean bishops from the priesthood, accused of abusing minors, and made it clear that they had no opportunity to appeal.
"The decision was passed by the pope last Thursday, October 11," the Vatican said in a statement, "following blatant acts of child abuse against minors". The decision "does not allow recourse," the statement added.
One of the bishops, Francisco Cox, 84, is the archbishop emeritus of the city of La Serena and is in poor health. He has a history of sexual abuse of children since his arrival as bishop of the Diocese of Chillan in 1974. The other is Marco Antonio Ordenes Fernandez, 53 years old. It has not been seen in public for years.
The pope's most severe sentence in church canon law is part of a huge scandal of sexual abuse and growing doubts about whether Francis will hold the bishops responsible for covering up the abuses.
It was transmitted a day after the Pope reluctantly accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, one of the most powerful men of the American church. But in this case, Francis praised Cardinal Wuerl for putting the good of the church before himself, kept him as guardian until his replacement was chosen and l? left his influential offices in the Vatican.
The charges against Cardinal Wuerl, who was until recently considered one of the church's most fervent defenders, have been linked to his tenure as Bishop of Pittsburgh and have been included in a grand jury report. Pennsylvania that documented widespread abuse over the decades. The allegations, which Cardinal Wuerl disputed, concerned his alleged mismanagement of abusive priests.
Chilean bishops defrocked Saturday were accused of sexual abuse and their sanctions were announced by the Vatican soon after the pope discussed the problem of clerical sexual violence in Chile with President Sebastián Piñera.
The two bishops had been under a cloud of suspicion for years. Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of Chilean abuse who personally discussed his ordeal with Francis, said on Twitter in Spanish that their stall was "a wonderful day for the survivors of these monsters".
Mr. Cox lived since 2002 in the Institute of Fathers Schönstatt in Santiago de Chile, at the request of the Vatican. In a statement issued Oct. 6, Fr. Fernando Baeza, provincial superior of the institute, said that another allegation of abuse committed in Germany in 2004 had been reported against Mr. Cox l & # 39; 39 last year and led to a Vatican inquiry.
The Vatican statement stated that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church office often charged with investigating church crimes, had alerted both men of their condemnation by the through the superiors of the religious institutions where they currently reside. He added that even though Mr. Cox was no longer a priest, he was still part of the institute.
The other lay priest, Bishop Fernandez, was 42 when he became Bishop of Iquique. He retired in 2012 at age 47, due to health issues related to hepatitis.
However, it later became apparent that Bishop Fernandez, who has not been seen in public since 2013 and who would presumably live in penitence and prayer in Peru, has been the subject of judicial and civil investigations for sexual assault.
Francis provoked a violent reaction among the survivors of abuse and their supporters this year when he defended these bishops from what he called the "slander" of accusations on the part of victims of sexual abuse. Under increasing pressure, he sent his main sex offender investigator to inquire about the situation in Chile, resulting in a damning report of 2,300 pages alleging misconduct and concealment.
In the following weeks and months, Francis turned around and suggested angrily that he had been misled. The country's 34 bishops resigned en masse during an emergency meeting with the pope in May, during which they discussed the alleged cover-up.
Last month, Francis accepted the sixth and seventh of these resignations.
