ABOARD PAPAL PLANE: Pope Francis apologised for insisting that victims of paedophile priests show “proof” to be believed, saying he realised it was a “slap in the face” to victims that he never intended.

But he doubled down on defending a Chilean bishop accused by victims of covering up for the country’s most notorious paedophile priest, and he repeated that anyone who makes such accusations without providing evidence is guilty of slander.

Pope Francis issued the partial mea culpa in an airborne press conference late on Sunday as he returned home from Chile and Peru, where the clergy abuse scandal and his own comments about it plunged the Chilean church into renewed crisis and revived questions about whether Pope Francis “gets it” about abuse.

He insisted that to date no one had provided him with evidence that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in keeping quiet about the perversions of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, the charismatic Chilean priest who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for molesting and fondling minors in his Santiago parish.

Flying home from the most contested trip of his papacy, Pope Francis said Barros would remain bishop of Osorno, Chile as long as there’s no evidence implicating him in the cover-up.

“I can’t condemn him because I don’t have evidence,” he said. “But I’m also convinced that he’s innocent.” Karadima was removed from ministry and sentenced by the Vatican in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer based on the testimony of his victims, who said they were all molested by him in the swank parish he headed in the El Bosque area of Santiago. A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes wasn’t lacking.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2018