Calumny:
- : a misrepresentation intended to harm another’s reputation • denounced his opponent for his defamatory insinuations and calumny
- : the act of uttering false charges or misrepresentations maliciously calculated to harm another’s reputation • He was the target of calumny for his unpopular beliefs.
Noted in “Chile’s bishops offer to resign en masse over sex-abuse coverup,” Jorge Poblete, The Los Angeles Times:
In his five years as pontiff, Francis has been praised for his attention to social issues and the poor but accused of failing to punish clergy who abused children. Such criticisms intensified during the pope’s visit to Chile in January, when he labeled the accusations against Barros as “calumny.”
The pope’s words were widely criticized, even by Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, a key Vatican advisor on clergy abuse.
Francis later apologized and asked Scicluna to investigate the matter. The pontiff also had emotionally charged meetings with three men who said they were abused by Karadima. Those meetings prompted him to write a letter to the Chilean bishops last month, saying that he felt “pain and shame” over the men’s accounts and that he wanted to “apologize to all those I have offended.”
