Pope Francis apologised for child sex abuse by the clergy on the first full day of his visit to Chile on Tuesday.
"Here I feel bound to express my pain and shame at the irreparable damage caused to children by some ministers of the Church," he said as he addressed Chile's government authorities including President Michelle Bachelet, representatives of civil society, and the diplomatic corps at the La Moneda Palace in Santiago.
"I am one with my brother bishops, for it is right to ask for forgiveness and make every effort to support the victims, even as we commit ourselves to ensuring that such things do not happen again".
Chile's Catholic Church has been struggling to keep up with a changing and modernising, increasingly skeptical and secular society for years.
Then, in 2010, it was was plunged into crisis when evidence emerged that it covered up for a prominent and powerful priest, something of a father figure for the Chilean elite, who had sexually abused minors in his high-class Santiago parish over decades. In February 2011, after several years of a Catholic canonical investigation, the Vatican found tKaradima guilty of sexually abusing minors and psychological abuse in Chile.
It sent him to a "life of prayer and penitence" and to "lifelong prohibition from the public exercise of any ministerial act, particularly confession and the spiritual guidance of any category of persons." But the Chilean Church has yet to fully recover from the scandal. Many of the local faithful are still furious over a 2015 decision by Pope Francis to appoint a bishop who had been one of Karadima's proteges. Bishop Juan Barros, appointed to lead the faithful in the southern city of Osorno, has always denied he knew that Karadima was Chile's worst clerical sexual predator.
But many Chileans have shown they are skeptical of Barros's claims. Francis's visit has also been disrupted by attacks on churches by political groups protesting against the government and the Vatican and campaigning for Indios rights - nine attacks in all, with the three latest coming on Monday night.
Another three churches were firebombed in Chile last night in protest against Pope Francis's visit to the South American country, sources said Tuesday.
Two of the churches are in Cunco, 700km from Santiago, in the Araucania region, which Francis will visit tomorrow. According to fire services the two churches went up in flames at the same time. The other fire was at the parish of the Mother of Divine Providence at Puente Alto, on the outskirts of the Chilean capital. According to eye witnesses a group of five people threw firebombs against the door, and the flags of Chile and the Vatican were burned.
The Argentine pontiff arrived in Chile for a three-day trip Monday. He will go on to a three-day trip in Peru.
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