Pope defrocks Chilean priest at center of child sex abuse scandal

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has defrocked the Chilean priest at the centre 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 laicised the 88-year-old Reverend Fernando Karadima, who was originally sanctioned to live a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for having sexually abused minors in the upscale 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 criticised 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 and that Karadima was informed of it Friday.

The decision appeared aimed at showing a get-tough 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.

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