Chile: Karadima — judicially established abuse, prescription bar, and a final civil judgment against the Church

Proceedings

1. 2011-11-14 · judicial fact-finding despite prescription; final civil judgment against the archdiocese

   Visiting judge, Santiago (2011); Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago (2012, 2019). Fernando Karadima was never criminally convicted: on 14 November 2011 visiting judge Jessica González dismissed the case as prescribed while expressly establishing as proven the abuses of Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and José Andrés Murillo (1981–1995), finding their testimony truthful — a ruling ratified on appeal in January 2012. On 27 March 2019 the Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago ordered the Archdiocese to pay CLP 100 million to each of the three for negligent cover-up; the ruling went unappealed and was paid in June 2019. The Vatican found him canonically guilty in 2011 and laicised him in 2018. He died in 2021.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• spiritual direction of adolescents and young men in the El Bosque community
• cult-like obedience culture the courts and Vatican both described