Symbol caption Sylvia Aguilar has travelled to Santiago to protest towards the ordination of Bishop Barros
“The Pope and the Chilean bishops don’t think about us and it really upsets us and hurts our soul,” says Sylvia Aguilar Maldonado.
The 79-yr-antique is the oldest member in a gaggle of parishioners who’ve travelled a few 900km (560 miles) from southern city of Osorno to Santiago, to make their voices heard all over Pope Francis’s visit to the Chilean capital
“we’re all Catholics and imagine within the same God. we would like to find a solution to this,” she says regarding her group’s vocal competition to the ordination of Juan Barros as bishop of Osorno.
Bishop Barros was ordained two years in the past despite stiff competition amongst parishioners.
Symbol caption Protesters accused Bishop Barros of “protecting up” the sexual abuse devoted through Fr Karadima
The words have been utilized by Pope Francis to describe the parishioners who’re upset by means of Bishop Barros’s ordination and were stuck on digicam whilst he was once talking to a pilgrim in Rome in October 2015.
More than years will have handed because the Pope uttered those words, however Ms Aguilar and the remainder of her workforce are still deeply indignant.
“Sadly when we asked the Pope to take away Bishop Juan Barros, instead of helping us, he accused us of being dull and left-wing and that is why we are right here,” she explains.
“He doesn’t even know us, so how can he accuse us of being such things? He thinks we’re politically stimulated despite the fact that we come from other parishes in Osorno and are doing this because we are in opposition to priests being allowed to abuse children.”
‘The time for forgiveness is over’
Apart from their roadside protest, the parishioners also organised a conference approximately sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to coincide with the day of Pope Francis’s arrival in Chile.
It was attended by means of a number of international organizations fighting for the rights of sexual abuse victims.
Juan Carlos Cruz is one in all those who attended. Mr Cruz, who used to be abused by way of Fr Karadima whilst he used to be a tender boy, is adamant that “the time for saying sorry and forgiving is over”.
Image caption Juan Carlos Cruz says that saying sorry isn’t enough
“Saying sorry isn’t isn’t sufficient for a survivor. What we would like is for the Pope to take motion.”
“There are concrete issues that he can do, like removing priests who have been accused and sentenced by way of the Chilean justice gadget or canon legislation and bishops who’ve coated up sexual abuse,” he says.
The activists additionally call for more transparency from the Church, which they accuse of performing secretively.
Changing attitudes
Juan Carlos Claret is the spokesman for the parishioners from Osorno who helped organise the convention.
Symbol caption Juan Carlos Claret needs the Church to take motion
Mr Claret says issues have changed for the worse given that Pope John Paul II visited Chile in 1987.
John Paul II condemned Gen Augusto Pinochet’s regime as “dictatorial” and insisted that the Roman Catholic Church needed to fight to convey democracy to Chile.
According to Mr Claret, again then, many Chileans against the Pinochet regime might turn to the Catholic Church for lend a hand.
He says that the jobs were reversed and now he and different Catholics are asking Chilean society for help against the Church.
The Vatican spokesman, Greg Burke, has mentioned that the Church has the maximum recognize for those planning to protest towards sexual abuse in the Church.
He also mentioned that there has been a possibility that Pope Francis would meet sufferers of sexual abuse in non-public, as he has on past journeys, but there has been no authentic confirmation of one of these assembly.
