All of Chile’s 34 bishops RESIGN over a sex abuse and cover-up scandal after crisis meeting with the Pope
Pope Francis has accused Chile’s bishops of destroying evidence of sex crimes
Francis said the entire Chilean church hierarchy was collectively responsible
In a leaked 2,300-page report, the pope blasted the entire Chilean church hierarchy for their ‘grave defects’ in handling abuse cases
All 34 Chilean bishops have now offered to resign following the crisis meeting
DAILYMAIL.COM
18 May 2018
All 34 Chilean bishops who attended a crisis meeting this week with Pope Francis about the cover-up of sexual abuse in their country have offered to resign, it has emerged.
The bishops also apologised to Chile, the victims of abuse and the pope for the scandal as they released an extraordinary joint statement.
It was not immediately clear if the pope, who slammed had accepted their resignation.
The bishops announced at the end of an emergency summit with Pope Francis that all 31 active bishops and three retired ones in Rome had signed a document offering to resign and putting their fate in the hands of the pope.
Francis can accept the resignations one by one, reject them or delay a decision.
It marked the first known time in history that an entire national bishops conference had offered to resign en masse over scandal, and laid bare the devastation that the abuse crisis has caused the Catholic Church in Chile and beyond.
Calls had mounted for the resignations after details emerged of the contents of a 2,300-page Vatican report into the Chilean scandal leaked early Friday.
Francis had accused the bishops of destroying evidence of sex crimes, pressuring investigators to minimize abuse accusations and showing ‘grave negligence’ in protecting children from paedophile priests.
In one of the most damning documents from the Vatican on the issue, Francis said the entire Chilean church hierarchy was collectively responsible for ‘grave defects’ in handling cases and the resulting loss of credibility that the Catholic Church has suffered.
‘No one can exempt himself and place the problem on the shoulders of the others,’ Francis wrote in the document, which was published by Chilean T13 television and confirmed as accurate Friday by the Vatican.
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