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Vatican investigator meets Chile abuse victim

NEW YORK — A Vatican sex-crimes investigator is meeting in New York with one of the key victims in the Chilean abuse scandal that involves a bishop Pope Francis has vigorously defended.

The meeting Saturday between Archbishop Charles Scicluna and whistleblower Juan Carlos Cruz will take place at a Roman Catholic church in Manhattan, the same day Pope Francis revived his lapsed sex abuse advisory commission by naming new members, after coming under fire for his overall handling of the scandal.

The initial three-year mandate of commission members had lapsed two months ago, on Dec. 17. Francis named nine new members Saturday and kept seven from the initial group. A Vatican statement said survivors of abuse are included, but didn’t identify them to protect their privacy.

Meanwhile, Scicluna is investigating accusations against Bishop Juan Barros, a protege of Chile’s most notorious predator priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima.

Cruz and two others have said Barros witnessed the abuse Karadima inflicted on them and ignored it. Barros has denied seeing or knowing of any abuse.

“I never knew anything about, nor ever imagined, the serious abuses which that priest committed against the victims,” he told The Associated Press recently.

The Vatican removed Karadima from ministry and sentenced him to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” in 2010 for his crimes. But Francis angered many when he appointed Barros the bishop of Osorno, Chile, in 2015.

Francis vetoed a proposal from the leadership of Chile’s bishops that Barros and two other bishops trained by Karadima resign and take a year’s sabbatical.

Francis has said he overruled the recommendation and rejected Barros’ resignation twice because he had no evidence of Barros’ wrongdoing.

But the AP reported this month that Francis received an eight-page letter from Cruz in April 2015 detailing his abuse and Barros’ complicity. Cruz had mailed similar versions of the letter to the pope and his ambassador in Santiago but never received any response.

Cruz now lives and works in Philadelphia. During an interview on Friday night with the Associated Press, Cruz said that several people had asked him to send information to Scicluna.

“I know about four or five people, priests and people who are not priests” who want to send information to the archbishop, he said. Some of them will also be interviewed by Scicluna, he added.

Cruz also said that during his meeting Saturday he will tell Scicluna about the alleged role that Chilean Cardinals Francisco Javier Err’zuriz and Ricardo Ezzati played in the cover-up. The cardinals have all publicly denied any wrongdoing. He said he will also mention the names of some bishops, who, like Barros, were taught by Karadima.

“I think these bishops also need to be sanctioned,” he said. “They had a very active role in all of this. They saw the same as Barros saw.”

Scicluna had planned to speak with him by Skype but switched to an in-person interview in New York after the AP reported that Cruz’s letter had been hand-delivered to the pope.

In the letter written in Spanish, Cruz begs for Francis to listen to him and make good on his pledge of “zero tolerance” for sex abuse.

He described how Karadima would kiss Barros and fondle his genitals, and do the same with younger priests and teens, and how young priests and seminarians would fight to sit next to Karadima at the table to receive his affections.

“More difficult and tough was when we were in Karadima’s room and Juan Barros — if he wasn’t kissing Karadima — would watch when Karadima would touch us — the minors — and make us kiss him, saying: ‘Put your mouth near mine and stick out your tongue.’ He would stick his out and kiss us with his tongue,” Cruz told the pope. “Juan Barros was a witness to all this innumerable times, not just with me but with others as well.”

“Juan Barros covered up everything that I have told you,” he added.

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