Yet his latest visit to South America is likely to be remembered most for 27 dismissive words that sparked outrage among Chileans already angry over a notorious clerical abuse scandal and haunted the rest of his trip. “That is the enigma of Pope Francis,” Anne Barrett Doyle of the online abuse database BishopAccountability.org said Sunday. Also looming over his visit to both Chile and Peru were damaging clerical sex abuse scandals and growing apathy over the Catholic Church. “Stop the abuse, Francis!” one person’s sign said. The banner was a reference to Peru’s biggest clerical abuse scandal, involving Luis Figari, the former leader of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae.

Source: Washington Post January 22, 2018 00:32 UTC