With the Catholic Church in the spotlight for hundreds of complaints of pederasty in Spain, one of the most emblematic victims of abuse in Latin America, José Andrés Murillo, denounces in an interview with EFE “impunity” in the Chilean clergy and the slowdown in investigations into abuses within the Church.
More than a decade ago, José Murillo and two other victims triggered the biggest scandal that has affected the powerful Catholic Church in Chile by publicly denouncing the late priest Fernando Karadima, sentenced in 2011 by the Vatican to “a life of prayer and penance”.
In 2018, Pope Francis recognized a “culture of abuse and cover-up” and dismissed a dozen clerics in the country. However, Murillo denounces, the reparation effort has declined and the Prosecutor’s Office “has greatly lowered the intensity of the persecution.”
In Latin America, the Catholic Church has a lot of power. Do you think it has been a key factor in so many cases of abuse?
The Catholic Church when I was a child was a kind of spirit, it was the way of understanding the world. He was omnipotent, omnipresent. There was a hallucinogenic cocktail regarding the role of the priest, who was a demigod without being one. And their requirements to access the clergy were minimal, they were not ethical or spiritual but intellectual and obedience. I think that was a big part of the problem.
Do you think it’s still like that after all the complaints?
Yes. There are still a series of elements that form a hallucinogenic substance that leaves people very weak in the face of power. There is a lack of in-depth investigation of the structures that allow abuse and cover-up to take place.
They are abuses that go beyond the bodies, they reach the depths of the heart and that is destructive. If the person who approaches you does so with an investiture and with the guarantee of coming from the divine, an almost infinite asymmetry is produced that still continues to occur
What differentiates the situation in Chile from that of the rest of Latin America?
In Chile we probably did not experience the most serious, but there was a much higher level of publicity because we are more aware. But in Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico, Brazil or El Salvador, the power that the Catholic Church has is very dangerous. There is a Pandora’s box that has not yet been opened and that must be opened: impunity. Here in Chile it began to open but there are still cases that are going to be scandalous.
Change the power structure
Has there been substantial progress in Chile in judicial matters since 2011?
First of all, it is difficult to determine how many complaints there have been because the Prosecutor’s Office normally takes recent complaints, not those that are prescribed, and due to the nature of the facts, many of the complaints take a long time to be carried out.
There are some who are on trial, people who are not priests, who are from the parish. But, for example, a very emblematic case, that of the former Chancellor of the Archbishopric, Óscar Toledo, whose trial has not yet taken place despite the fact that he has many victims. The truth is that the investigations have slowed down and the Prosecutor’s Office has lowered the intensity of the persecution a lot, which is curious.
How has the Vatican’s response evolved since the Pope’s emblematic visit in 2018?
The response has been declining. In 2018 we went to the Vatican and the Pope brought out a couple of cards that I think were correct, like talking about a culture of abuse and cover-up. He then called all the bishops of Chile and asked for their resignation.
However, I don’t know if he lacked energy or there is a level of internal resistance within the Roman Vatican structure that made it impossible for him to carry out the necessary changes, energetic actions to stop the abuse, to prevent it, to change the power structure.
A haven for abusers
Is there hope that the Church will undertake new inquiries, especially now, after the new complaints in Spain?
The truth is that I do not know. We have done everything. We even went to the pope’s house, talked to him and explained this to him. I told him that here there is a problem of structure and exercise of power. I also told him, I hope one day the Church will become a refuge for victims and not a refuge for abusers as it is today. And so we would be allies, right?
Is there still the same level of corruption within the Church in 2011 and now?
Yes. There is a level of internal corruption, within the Vatican, within the Church… In Chile today there is gigantic corruption because I believe that what an American academic psychologist called “the paradox of power” is being experienced. People who take power from a number of care tools, but when they get it, they remove all of those abilities.