Pope Francis has accepted the resignations of two more Chilean bishops amid the worldwide sex-abuse scandal roiling the Church, the Vatican said on Friday.
The two bishops who stepped down are Bishop Carlos Eduardo Pellegrín Barrera of the diocese of San Bartolomé de Chillán and Bishop Cristián Enrique Contreras Molina of the diocese of San Felipe. Prosecutors recently announced that Barrera, 60, is under investigation for sex crimes. Molina, 71, was deemed innocent of such crimes by the Vatican in 2014, and a civil prosecutor declared the case against him had too little evidence to proceed, according to BishopAccountability.org.
Every one of Chile’s 34 bishops offered to resign in May after a Vatican investigation resulted in a 2,300-page report showing cleric in the country neglected and hid sexual abuse. So far, the Pope has accepted the resignations of seven of them, counting Barrera and Molina. Chilean prosecutors and police raided four diocese offices last week to investigate potential evidence of sexual abuse and of a cover-up.
The turmoil in Chile is a microcosm of the sexual-abuse scandal facing the Church worldwide, which was reignited earlier this year by a Pennsylvania grand jury that found rampant abuse of minor children by 301 priests over about 70 years, and by the revelation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s abuse of minors and adult seminarians earlier this year.
Francis himself was implicated in the scandal when the former apostolic nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, called for him to resign the papacy, accusing him of covering up McCarrick’s abuse.