Pope defrocks priest at center of abuse scandal

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has defrocked the Chilean priest at the heart of the global sex abuse scandal rocking his papacy, invoking his “supreme” authority to stiffen a sentence originally handed down by a Vatican court in 2011.

In a statement Friday, the Vatican said Francis had laicized the 88-yearold Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was originally sanctioned to live a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for having sexually abused minors in the Santiago parish he ran.

The “penance and prayer” sanction has been the Vatican’s punishment of choice for elderly priests convicted of raping and molesting children. It has long been criticized by victims as too soft and essentially an all-expenses-paid retirement.

The Vatican didn’t say what new evidence, if any, prompted Francis to re-evaluate Karadima’s sanction and impose what clergy consider to be the equivalent of a death sentence. It said Francis made the “exceptional decision” for the good of the church, and cited the church canon that lays out the pope’s “supreme, full, immediate and universal power” to serve the church.

The statement said the decree, signed Thursday, takes effect immediately.

The decision appeared aimed at showing a gettough approach to sex abuse after a series of missteps by Francis and accusations by a former Vatican ambassador that Francis had rehabilitated a now-disgraced former American cardinal early on in his papacy.

Francis sparked a crisis in his papacy earlier this year when he strongly defended one of Karadima’s proteges, Bishop Juan Barros, against accusations that he had witnessed Karadima’s abuse and ignored it.

Francis had claimed that the accusations against Barros were “calumny” and politically motivated, and he defended his 2015 decision to appoint Barros bishop of a small Chilean diocese over the objections of the faithful and many in the Chilean hierarchy.

Francis later ordered a Vatican investigation that uncovered decades of abuse and cover-ups by the Chilean church leadership. Francis apologized to the victims and set about making amends, including getting every active bishop in Chile to offer to resign. To date, he has accepted seven of the more than 30 resignations offered, including that of Barros.

Pollsters have cited the Karadima scandal, which first erupted in 2009, as the tipping point in the Chilean church’s progressive loss of credibility among ordinary Chileans.