May 10, 2024, 11:09 PM
May 10, 2024, 11:09 PM
The Society of Jesus in Chile expelled priest Felipe Berríos, after completing an investigation into “acts of a sexual nature” and concluding that he is “guilty of crimes against the sixth commandment” committed with minors.
“After a long canonical process, the Father General of the Society of Jesus, after having studied the information collected, has decreed the expulsion of Felipe Berríos from the Society of Jesus,” the order indicated in a statement.
The Jesuits prohibited Berríos from “the public exercise of priesthood and all pastoral contact with minors during a period of 10 years.”
The note indicates that the decision has the endorsement of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faiththe body of the Catholic Church that ensures integrity within the institution.
The Society of Jesus explained that the investigation began based on a complaint filed on April 28, 2022. The investigation confirmed “the plausibility of acts of a sexual nature, reported by seven women, who were between 14 and 23 years old when they occurred.” .
An eighth complaint was then investigated and the evidence was sent to the General Curia of the Society of Jesus in Rome, in May of last year.
The note states that Berríos is “guilty of crimes against the sixth commandment committed with minors and of crimes of solicitation to sin against the sixth commandment, during or on the occasion of confession.”
The sixth commandment says: “Thou shalt not commit impure acts”.
“As the Company of Jesus, We humbly apologize to the victims, their families and loved ones for the pain caused,” the statement says. “Events like these should never happen.”
The dismissal
The decision of canonical justice occurred despite the fact that the case against the priest was dismissed by a Chilean court in June of last year, after Berríos himself asked to be investigated to prove his innocence due to a complaint of sexual abuse.
“The Company confuses public opinion”Berríos declared this Friday to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, ensuring that the Jesuits’ statement is imprecise.
The religious explained that he was sanctioned for four cases. The most serious is “an alleged hug given in the year 2000, in the patio of a retirement home, to which an eroticized nature is attributed,” he said.
“The other three complaints refer to alleged fleeting contacts with the lips, knees, thighs or buttocks of the complainants.”
However, he assures that “qualifying these events as ‘a request to sin against the sixth commandment’ (…) is not consistent with any conduct that has been attributed to me in this process or in any other.”
“My break is with the hierarchy of an institution, not with the Gospel”he said in reference to his resignation from the order to which he belonged for 45 years.
“I am sad but calm,” he added. “During this entire process I have suffered the opacity of the Vatican and the furious attack of some users of the social networks even before having been informed of the investigation.”
“I am also calm because throughout this period I always made an effort not to harm the complainants,” he added.
controversial priest
Felipe Berríos was one of the creators of “A roof for Chile”, the initiative to obtain private contributions to build basic housing and combat marginality. It is replicated in several countries of Latin America and the Caribbean as “A roof for my country”.
He was also a columnist for El Mercurio, the most traditional newspaper in the country, where in January 2009 he published a controversial article in which he criticized the students of the private universitieslocated in wealthy neighborhoods of Santiago, saying that they were filled with academic knowledge without having contact with the reality on the other side of the city.
In June 2013, Berríos gave an interview to Chilean public television in which he stated: “The Church has fallen into a language of secrecy, of half-truths and people have become accustomed to reading between the lines.
In that speech he also criticized Chilean society. He said that the elite lived worried “about rituals without content, (…) full of fear and seeking salvation, which God gives them free of charge, but they want to buy it with good actions.”
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