Karadima case

Fernando Karadima (6 August 1930 – 26 July 2021 ), a Chilean Catholic priest, was accused as early as 1984 of sexually abusing adolescent boys.

Years later, when a church investigator found the accusers credible, his superior, the Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, took no action against him.

In 1984 a group of parishioners reported "improper conduct" on the part of Karadima to Juan Francisco Fresno, Archbishop of Santiago de Chile.

One of them later told a court that he learned that their letter was "torn up and thrown away".

Fresno's secretary at the time was one of Karadima's protégés, Juan Barros.

His connections extended to officials in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and to the papal nuncio to Chile, Angelo Sodano, who became a cardinal and Vatican Secretary of State in 1991.

Karadima was a dynamic leader, described as "Impeccably dressed and with perfectly groomed nails and slicked-back hair", who "cut an aristocratic figure, appealing to both young and old in Chile's elite."

He trained 50 priests and several bishops.

Two others remained as heads of their dioceses, positions they had held since 1996 in one case and 2003 in the other.

In mid-2003, a young Catholic, José Murillo, informed Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, the new Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, by letter that he had been abused by Karadima.

The Episcopal Conference of Chile had established guidelines for handling accusations of sexual abuse by clergy months earlier, and the guidelines called for an investigation if the accuser demonstrates "good faith" and did not require an assessment of the accusation itself.

Errázuriz told Murillo he was praying for him and in June 2004 he opened the first investigation into Karadima.

Two years later, the investigator told Errázuriz that he found the accusers credible, and suggested certain courses of action.

Errázuriz rejected the report.

He explained years later in an interview with the magazine Qué Pasa that he mistakenly relied on someone else's assessment: "I made a mistake: I asked and overvalued the opinion of a person very close to the accused and the accuser. While the promoter of justice thought that the accusation was plausible, this other person affirmed just the opposite."

The case of Fernando Karadima concerned the sexual abuse of minors in Chile, which became public in 2010.

It raised questions about the responsibility and complicity of several Chilean bishops, including some of the country's highest-ranking Catholic prelates.

Karadima's accusers made their charges public in 2010.

In April 2010 a criminal complaint was filed by victims of sexual abuse, four men who were once devoted followers of Karadima.

The Public Ministry appointed Xavier Armendáriz as special prosecutor and he promised an unbiased investigation.

The Reverend Hans Kast testified that he had witnessed sexual abuse as did the Reverend Andrés Ferrada "but no one ever did anything about it".

The Reverend Francisco Walker, president of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal, resigned from the court after admitting he had leaked the claimants' personal information to Bishop Arteaga and Father Morales.

After seven months of conducting the probe, the court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that there was not enough evidence to charge Karadima.

One of the claimants said: "We would have liked to appeal, but with defence attorneys like this, who have the Appeals and Supreme Court eating out of their hands, and a number of powerful people who continue to protect Karadima, we knew it would be an uphill battle that we were likely to lose".

In response to the public accusations, Chilean church officials conducted their own investigation and in June 2010 submitted a 700-page report to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

While that report was under consideration, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Errázuriz and named Ricardo Ezzati Andrello to succeed him as Archbishop of Santiago de Chile.

The Chilean Catholic Church completed a thorough investigation of the charges that year, and in February 2011 the Vatican found Karadima guilty of sexually abusing minors and psychological abuse.

It forced him into retirement, relocated him away from contact with former parishioners and followers, and denied him the right to function as a priest for the rest of his life.

Civil legal action against him was thwarted by the statute of limitations.

Karadima had been influential in the spiritual formation and careers of dozens of priests and several bishops.

Karadima's accusers charged those bishops and other high-ranking prelates had failed to investigate their claims of sexual abuse and had endangered the minors in their care.

When the Vatican found Karadima guilty, one of the bishops associated with him, Andrés Arteaga, resigned from his position as Vice-Chancellor of the Universidad Católica de Chile.

On 16 January 2011 the CDF found Karadima guilty of abusing minors and sentenced him to a life of "prayer and penance", which the Vatican described as "a lifelong prohibition from the public exercise of any ministerial act, particularly confession and the spiritual guidance of any category of persons".

His forced retirement included relocation to a place where he will not have contact with previous parishioners or anyone he mentored.

On 18 February, Archbishop Ezzati made the decision public.

Karadima continued to maintain his innocence.

In 2015, the attempt to install the fourth, Juan Barros Madrid, as Bishop of Osorno, became a multi-year battle, first confined to Chile, but eventually drawing the attention of the Vatican and worldwide media coverage.

Fernando Karadima was a spiritual leader and father figure for young men from Santiago's social elite.

He was based in the "Parroquia El Bosque", which serves some of Santiago's wealthiest and most influential families.

By 2018, it attracted worldwide attention.