The Vatican announced Friday that Pope Francis has dismissed Chilean homosexual abuser Fernando Karadima from the Catholic priesthood.

“Pope Francis has dismissed from the clerical state Fernando Karadima Fariña of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile,” reads a notification from the Vatican press office. “The Holy Father has taken this exceptional decision in conscience and for the good of the Church.”

“The Holy Father has exercised his ‘ordinary power, which is supreme, full, immediate and universal in the Church’ (Code of Canon Law, canon 331), conscious of his service to the people of God as successor of Saint Peter,” the notification stated.

“The decree, signed by the Pope on Thursday, September 27, 2018, came into force automatically from that moment, and also implies the dispensation of all clerical obligations. Karadima Fariña was notified on Friday, September 28, 2018,” it concludes.

Last February, a group of Chilean Catholics sharply criticized Pope Francis for defending Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, who had been accused of covering up for Father Karadima and of personally participating in the abuse.

Alleged abuse victim Juan Carlos Cruz wrote to Pope Francis in 2015 complaining of a homo-erotic circle of priests and boys around Father Fernando Karadima, in which Bishop Barros himself participated.

In his letter, Cruz explicitly accused Barros, who had been a protégé of Father Karadima, of carrying on an openly homosexual relationship with the priest and of being present for the abuse of the boys around him.

In early April, the pope recognized he had made “grave mistakes” in his handling of the Chilean sexual abuse scandal. In a letter to the Chilean bishops, Francis said that he planned to invite them to Rome to discuss an investigation into the abuse carried out by Archbishop Charles Scicluna.

In his letter, Francis spoke of his “shame” and “pain” for the suffering of the victims and explained his actions by insisting he had been given insufficient information about the case.

“I have made grave mistakes in the assessment and my perception of the situation, especially due to a lack of truthful and balanced information,” Francis wrote.

Revelations surfaced at that time, however, that the pope had in fact learned about the abuse problem in graphic detail from Cruz in 2015, despite the pontiff’s more recent insistence that he had no knowledge of the accusations.

In a lengthy press conference in Rome, one of the victims of abuse told the press that Francis had acknowledged, “I was part of the problem, I caused this, and I apologize to you.”

On Thursday, Vatican whistleblower Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò reiterated charges that Pope Francis also knew about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s serial homosexual abuse and yet elevated him to a role of influence in the Vatican.

“The center of my testimony was that since at least June 23, 2013, the pope knew from me how perverse and evil McCarrick was in his intentions and actions,” Viganò said, “and instead of taking the measures that every good pastor would have taken, the pope made McCarrick one of his principal agents in governing the Church, in regard to the United States, the Curia, and even China, as we are seeing these days with great concern and anxiety for that martyr Church.”

Although this was the central charge, the archbishop notes that it was not the only one, adding that “the pope’s cover-up of McCarrick was clearly not an isolated mistake.”

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