Tag Archives: Chile

Pope orders investigation of bishop as U.S. Church leaders meet on abuse crisis

Pope Francis meets U.S. Catholic Church leaders Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Archbishop of Los Angeles JosŽ Horacio G—mez, Cardinal Sean Patrick OÕMalley, Archbishop of Boston, and Monsignor Brian Bransfield, General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, during a private audience at the Vatican, September 13, 2018. Vatican Media/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis has ordered an investigation of an American bishop accused of sexual misconduct with adults and accepted his resignation, the Vatican and U.S. Church officials said on Thursday.

The announcement was made as the pope was meeting U.S. Catholic Church leaders to discuss the fallout from a scandal involving a former American cardinal and demands from an archbishop that the pontiff step down.

The Catholic Church worldwide is reeling from crises involving sexual abuse of minors. Surveys show plummeting confidence in the Church the United States, Chile, Australia, and Ireland where the scandal has hit hardest, as well as in other countries.

The bishop who resigned is Michael J. Bransfield, 75, of the diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia. The Vatican said the pope had appointed Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore to run the diocese until a new bishop is appointed.

Neither the Vatican nor the Archdiocese of Baltimore gave any details of the specific allegations against Bransfield.

Neither Bransfield nor his legal representative could immediately be reached for comment.

The archdiocese of Baltimore’s website said the pope had instructed Lori to conduct an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment of adults by Bransfield.

“My primary concern is for the care and support of the priests and people of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston at this difficult time,” Lori said in a statement.

“I further pledge to conduct a thorough investigation in search of the truth into the troubling allegations against Bishop Bransfield and to work closely with the clergy, religious and lay leaders of the diocese until the appointment of a new bishop,” he said.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Pope vows no more cover ups on sexual abuse in letter to Catholics

FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis delivers a speech after a meeting with Patriarchs of the churches of the Middle East at the St. Nicholas Basilica in Bari, southern Italy July 7, 2018. REUTERS/Tony Gentile/File Photo

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis, facing sexual abuse crises in several countries, wrote an unprecedented letter to all Catholics on Monday, asking each one of them to help root out “this culture of death” and vowing there would be no more cover-ups.

In a highly personal letter addressed to “the people of God,” Church language for all members, the pope appeared to be launching an appeal for all Catholics to face the crisis together and not let it tear the Church apart.

The Catholic Church in the United States, Chile, Australia, and Ireland – where the pope is making a two-day visit this weekend – are reeling from crises involving sexual abuse of minors. Numerous surveys have pointed to plummeting confidence in the Church in those countries and elsewhere.

In his letter, the pope referred to the suffering endured by minors due to sexual abuse at the hands of a “significant number of clerics and consecrated persons.”

The Vatican said it was the first time a pope had written to all of the world’s some 1.2 billion Catholics about sexual abuse. Past letters on sexual abuse scandals have been addressed to bishops and faithful of individual countries.

“We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death,” he said.

Quoting a Gospel passage that says “If one member suffers, all suffer together,” Francis added:

“(Those words) forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons.”

“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the

gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,” Francis wrote.

Advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse expressed disappointment. “More actions, less words,” said Anne Barrett-Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S.-based resource center that tracks cases of clerical abuse worldwide.

“He needs an effective discipline process for bishops and religious superiors who are known to have enabled abuse,” she said.

Last week a grand jury in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania released the findings of the largest-ever investigation of sex abuse in the U.S. Catholic Church, finding that 301 priests in the state had sexually abused minors over the past 70 years.

CRYING OUT TO HEAVEN

He acknowledged that “the heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept

quiet or silenced”.

“Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated,” he said.

He also acknowledged that the implementation of a zero tolerance had been “delayed” in some places.

Victims groups have said that while new policies have been put into place in several countries to alert civil authorities about cases of abuse, the pope still needed to do more to hold accountable bishops who covered it up, mostly by moving priests from parish to parish.

In his first direct response to the U.S. grand jury report, Francis said that while most cases it listed “belong to the past,” it was clear that the abuse cited “was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced”.

Last month, Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., and one of the U.S. Church’s most prominent figures, stepped down as a cardinal after accusations that he abused two minors about 50 years ago and later abused adult seminarians.

He was believed to be the first cardinal to lose his red hat in nearly a century and the first ever for alleged sexual abuse.

In May, all 34 of Chile’s bishops offered their resignation to the pope over a widening sexual abuse crisis there. He has so far accepted five of the resignations.

(Additional reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin, editing by Steve Scherer, Richard Balmforth)

‘There’s going to be a raid’: A Chilean prosecutor forces Catholic Church to give up secrets

Archbishop of Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati attends his religious service at the Santiago cathedral, in Santiago, Chile, July 25, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

By Aislinn Laing and Cassandra Garrison

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Two special envoys sent by Pope Francis to investigate a child sex abuse scandal in Chile were meeting priests and Church workers at a university in the Chilean capital last month when aides rushed into the room with an alarming development: police and prosecutors were about to start raiding Church offices.

The envoys were 90 minutes into a seminar on how to investigate allegations of sex abuse committed by fellow clergy following revelations that hundreds of children might have been molested. For decades, the Roman Catholic Church in Chile quietly investigated such allegations without alerting police, but it now stands accused, even by Pope Francis himself, of a cover-up that allowed abusers to operate with impunity.

One of the clergymen listening to the envoys was Jaime Ortiz de Lazcano, the legal adviser to Santiago’s archbishop. The aides rushed to his side and told him, “‘Father, go to the (Church offices) because there’s going to be a raid’,” Ortiz later recounted.

Chilean prosecutor Emiliano Arias, who is leading an investigation against alleged sex abuse crimes by Roman Catholic priests, is seen at his work place in Rancagua, Chile, July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Esteban Medel

Chilean prosecutor Emiliano Arias, who is leading an investigation against alleged sex abuse crimes by Roman Catholic priests, is seen at his work place in Rancagua, Chile, July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Esteban Medel

Police and prosecutors were staging simultaneous raids on Church offices less than a mile away from the university and outside the capital, looking for evidence of sex crimes the Church had not reported to the police.

The surprise sweeps, ordered by Emiliano Arias, a provincial prosecutor, marked the start of what experts who track sex crimes in the Roman Catholic Church say is one of the most aggressive investigations ever undertaken by a judicial authority anywhere in the world.

Since that cold June afternoon, there have been five more raids on Church offices to seize documents, phones, tablets, and computers, leaving the Vatican scrambling to respond to a rapidly unfolding scandal that is the worst image crisis of Francis’ papacy, now in its sixth year.

Leading the charge against the Church is Arias, 45, who is experienced in fighting organized crime and has a showman’s fondness for taking television news crews on the raids.

Arias told Reuters in an exclusive interview that documents seized by his team contained 30 cases of alleged abuse dating back to 2007 that the Church had not reported to the police. While Reuters was allowed to film his investigators poring through seized documents, he declined to give details from the files because he said they named victims of abuse.

He also alleged that some local Church officials had tried to destroy documents but that his team – made up of two prosecutors, three lawyers and a unit of specialist sex crime police – had salvaged them. He declined to say who had tried to destroy them or how they had tried to get rid of them.

Citizens hold a banner reading "They will not steal our hope" as Archbishop of Santiago Ricardo Ezzati (not pictured) attends his religious service at the Santiago cathedral, in Santiago, Chile, July 25, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

Citizens hold a banner reading “They will not steal our hope” as Archbishop of Santiago Ricardo Ezzati (not pictured) attends his religious service at the Santiago cathedral, in Santiago, Chile, July 25, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

Reuters was unable to independently confirm those assertions.

Víctor Villa Castro, head of communications for the Santiago archbishopric, said he could not comment on any cases under investigation by Arias.

“We would, however, say that we have no knowledge of the destruction of documents, nor the covering-up of crimes,” he said. “The victims are the first, and most important, in this and we will cooperate with the civil authorities in any way that can help to get to the truth of these matters.”

Arias says he wants to arrest both those who perpetrated the abuse and those who he says helped to cover it up. He arrested Oscar Munoz, a top aide to Santiago’s archbishop, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, after seizing church documents in which Munoz confessed to sex crimes. Munoz’s lawyer has acknowledged that some of the accusations in the documents are true but says he will challenge some others.

Arias last week named Ezzati, the most senior Roman Catholic in Chile, as a suspect, accusing him of covering up his aide’s alleged abuses. Ezzati has denied any wrongdoing and promised to cooperate.

Arias said he launched the raids after Church officials in Rancagua, the capital of O’Higgins region, told him he would have to make a formal petition to the Vatican to obtain information he was seeking because it was protected by ‘pontifical secret.’

A spokesman for the Rancagua archbishop’s office said they were told to do this by the Vatican and insisted they were cooperating fully with civil authorities. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke declined to comment.

The Roman Catholic Church says the ‘pontifical secret’ provision in canon law is intended to protect the privacy of all involved in sex abuse claims. Critics say bishops have historically used it as a shield to block inquiries from civil authorities.

“We are not talking about a fraud, or a theft, we are talking about crimes against children,” Arias said in an interview in his office in Rancagua, explaining his decision not to submit the request to the Vatican and instead get a judge to approve the raids.

‘CULTURE OF ABUSE’

Allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy are not new, but under Chilean law governing the separation of church and state, the Catholic Church, a powerful and politically influential institution in this conservative Andean nation, has no legal obligation to report the allegations to police.

The sex abuse scandal came to a head after Pope Francis visited in January and was initially dismissive of claims by survivors of a cover-up by top Church officials there. A backlash among advocates for abuse survivors prompted him to dispatch an investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, who produced a confidential 2,300-page report on the allegations.

After receiving the report Pope Francis wrote an open letter to Chile’s faithful in May in which he decried “the culture of abuse and the system of cover-up” by the Church in Chile.

He summoned all 34 of Chile’s bishops to Rome in May where they offered to resign en masse. He has so far accepted five resignations and is expected to accept more.

Arias speaks mostly without emotion during the hour-long interview until he talks about how, according to their accusers, priests convinced their victims that they were doing nothing wrong. Then he displays flashes of anger, sometimes so impassioned that he trips over his words.

“I have seen some tough cases but what shocks me about all this is the abuse of conscience – how an accused (Church worker) has entered into the soul of another person and is capable of convincing him that satisfying his desires is not even a sin,” said Arias, who describes his family as “very Catholic” but says he has lapsed.

Arias said he can prosecute senior Church officials for covering up the abuses if he can prove they knew about the systematic abuse and failed to do anything to stop it, or hid evidence to prevent civil authorities from getting involved.

But first he must prosecute the abusers, said Maria Ines Horvitz, a senior lawyer at the State Defense Council of Chile, a public agency that provides legal advice to the Chilean state. And to do that he must find cases within the 10-year statute of limitations – a potential problem that has bedeviled prosecutors in other countries – or turn to the one court in Chile that still handles cases from before roughly 2000, which is backlogged.

PROSECUTORIAL ZEAL

The national public prosecutor instructed all provincial prosecutors last month to pursue sex abuse allegations more vigorously.

But Arias has gone much further than his colleagues in his zeal to bring prosecutions. He has repeatedly widened his remit, from a handful of cases to dozens, from his provincial base to the capital, and from investigating claims of abuse by 14 priests in Rancagua to the alleged complicity of Ezzati, Santiago’s archbishop, himself.

As a result of his uncovering new cases in Church documents, the national prosecutor last week authorized him to expand his investigation into other regions.

BishopAccountability.Org, which tracks allegations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests, says the only comparable investigation into sex abuse in the Church was in Belgium in 2010 when police launched coordinated raids on Church offices and the home of a cardinal. That investigation did not lead to any prosecutions because of the statute of limitations.

Arias is carrying out his investigation in the absence of any public backing from the center-right Sebastian Pinera government. Shortly before becoming president in March, Pinera criticized the Church for its “defensive” attitude to the scandal and “insufficient” investigations but has remained silent on the issue since.

A government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

WHY NOW?

For decades allegations of sexual abuse by priests swirled through Chilean society, but little was done to address them. The Church was largely left to police itself.

But this year that suddenly changed.

Church watchers say several factors contributed to this watershed moment – the international attention received by several victims who went public; the pope’s initial poor handling of the claims; and the ripple effect of the global #MeToo movement.

The Church’s grip on Chile is also weakening, public opinion polling shows, even though the formerly predominately Catholic nation remains largely conservative on social issues.

The waning support for the Church was evident when the pope visited Chile in January – there were many empty seats at his public masses. This was “a turning point for Francis’ papacy” a Vatican official said. “It is when he realized that he was listening to the wrong people about the real situation in Chile.”

For Arias, the pope’s subsequent mea culpa that the Church had covered up abuses gave him the impetus he needed to act. “His description of what was happening in Chile was powerful and should concern us all,” he said.

(Reporting by Aislinn Lange and Cassandra Garrison in Santiago; Additional reporting by Philip Pullella in Rome; Editing by Ross Colvin and Paul Thomasch)

800 Venezuelans flee to Brazil daily to escape insecurity, hunger: UNHCR

Venezuelans line up to cross into Colombia at the border in Paraguachon, Colombia, Feb. 16, 2018. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga/File Photo

GENEVA (Reuters) – More than 800 Venezuelans stream into northern Brazil each day, the United Nations said on Friday, citing Brazilian government statistics on people fleeing the worsening crisis in the economically crippled nation.

More than 52,000 Venezuelans have arrived in Brazil since the start of 2017, including an estimated 40,000 living in Boa Vista, capital of Roraima state, it said.

About 25,000 of the migrants are asylum seekers while 10,000 have obtained temporary resident visas and the rest are seeking to regularize their status, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

“We are stepping up our response in Brazil as the number of Venezuelan arrivals grows,” UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told a news briefing. “According to the government’s latest estimates, more than 800 Venezuelans are entering Brazil each day.”

Venezuelans have also fled to Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Argentina and Peru, while others have sought refugee status in the United States, Spain, Mexico and Costa Rica, according to the UNHCR.

President Nicolas Maduro’s government in Caracas is faced with widespread discontent over hyperinflation and shortages of food and medicines during a fifth year of recession that he blames on Western hostility and the fall of oil prices.

Venezuelans report they are fleeing insecurity, violence and often a loss of income, Spindler said. Many are in desperate need of food, shelter and health care.

UNHCR is working with Brazilian authorities to register Venezuelans to ensure they have proper documentation that entitles them to work and access services, Spindler said.

Ten shelters have been opened in Boa Vista, each with 500 people, but some Venezuelans are living on the streets, he said.

Venezuelans willing to relocate from Roraima to other parts of Brazil are being flown to Sao Paulo and Cuiaba this week, as communities and services in Boa Vista are over-stretched, he said.

UNHCR’s $46 million appeal to help Venezuelans across the region is only 4 percent funded, Spindler said, and he called for more donations.

Within Venezuela, the economic crisis has limited people’s access to health services and medicines, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.

“WHO is working closely with the health authorities in order to fill those shortages. We are providing medicines for malaria and anti-retrovirals. We are equipping maternal hospitals with supplies that are needed for pregnant women and babies.”

Venezuela’s crisis has posed major challenges for governments in the region, who also worry that assistance to Venezuelans could increase the number of people leaving their country.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Chilean president says Trump concerned about Venezuelan crisis

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet speaks during a news conference alongside Argentine President Mauricio Macri at the Olivos presidential residence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 16, 2016. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump expressed concern about the political and humanitarian situation in Venezuela in a call on Sunday with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, the Chilean president told reporters on Monday.

Bachelet said she talked with Trump about the actions regional leaders were taking with regard to Venezuela, which has been wracked by an economic crisis in the last three years and is facing external pressure to make political reforms.

“(President Trump) presented to me his worries about the situation in Venezuela,” Bachelet told reporters at the La Moneda presidential palace in Chile’s capital, Santiago.

“I told him about the actions (Chile’s) foreign ministry is carrying out together with other foreign ministries, and we are staying in contact to see how we can help Venezuela have a peaceful exit from its domestic situation.”

Venezuelans are suffering from severe shortages of basic goods, including food.

The government of Nicolas Maduro blames private businesses for sabotaging the economy with price speculation and routinely denounces opposition activists as coup-plotters, intent on bringing down socialism in the country.

Opposition leaders say the Maduro government has undermined democracy by canceling a key referendum and delaying local elections, among other measures.

Last week, Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, said Venezuela should be suspended from the organization if it does not hold general elections as soon as possible.

Relations between Venezuela and the United States have been rocky since former socialist president Hugo Chavez rose to power in 1999. The South American country has repeatedly criticized the United States for interfering in its domestic affairs.

The U.S. blacklisted Venezuela’s vice president as a drug trafficker in February, and Trump later that month called for the release of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero and Gram Slattery, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Chile battles devastating wildfires as international help pours in

By Anthony Esposito

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – The worst wildfires in Chile’s modern history are ravaging wide swaths of the country’s central-south regions, as a massive Boeing 747-400 Super Tanker arrived on Wednesday on loan from the United States to help extinguish the blazes.

“We have never seen something of this size, never in Chile’s history. And the truth is the (firefighting) forces are doing everything that is humanly possible and will continue to do so until the fires are contained and controlled,” President Michelle Bachelet said, as she visited the hard-hit Maule region.

Forest fires are a regular feature of Chile’s hot, arid summers, but a nearly decade-long drought combined with historically high temperatures have created tinder-dry conditions.

International help from France, the United States, Peru and Mexico has been pouring into Chile as the fires swept through forested hills and into neighboring towns, scorching homes, industry and the region’s world-renowned vineyards. The country last week declared a state of emergency.

As of Wednesday, 85 separate fires had been recorded, covering some 190,000 hectares (469,500 acres) – more than twice the area of New York City.

Chile’s Conaf forestry service said that 35 of the fires were still out of control.

At least some of the fires may have been started intentionally and there had been a number of arrests in relation to ongoing investigations, said Bachelet.

Three firefighters were killed on Jan. 15 and another three gravely injured. Local media reported on Wednesday that another firefighter had died.

Some Chileans, such as Susana Molina, 82, a boutique wine producer, have seen their livelihoods destroyed.

“All my fields burned, there were four hectares that I had and it all burned,” she said, from Cauquenes in the Maule region. Around 100 small vineyards in Cauquenes alone had been damaged so far, said the local industry association.

The forestry industry has also been impacted, with smaller outfits the most vulnerable.

Chile’s forest products industry, the country’s second biggest by exports after copper mining, is led by Empresas Copec subsidiary Arauco, Empresas CMPC, and Masisa.

Chile, along the seismically-active Pacific Rim, is no stranger to natural disasters. It is often walloped by earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and strong storms.

As a result, its emergency response teams, building codes and residents are usually well-prepared to confront such situations. But the scale of this season’s fires have overwhelmed authorities.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito, additional reporting by Reuters TV; editing by Rosalba O’Brien, G Crosse)

Chile’s government works to re-establish connectivity after 7.6 earthquake

A damaged road is seen after a quake at Tarahuin, on Chiloe island, southern Chile

By Gram Slattery

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile’s government set to work on Monday repairing roads and restoring electricity to southern regions affected by a major earthquake that struck on Christmas Day, frightening thousands but resulting in no fatalities or major damage.

The quake, a magnitude 7.6 centered off Chiloe Island northwest of Patagonia, caused thousands in the tourism and salmon farming region to evacuate to higher ground amid fears of a tsunami. A tsunami never materialized however and, thanks to strict building codes in the earthquake-prone nation, structural damage was light. By Sunday night, almost all Chileans had returned to their homes.

The quake did, however, cause at least one bridge collapse, cut power to 21,000 Chileans, and severed sections of the island’s major highway.

“There are zones with landslides and cutoffs,” Chilean Public Works Minister Alberto Undurraga said in televised remarks, adding that it will take two to seven days to make the needed repairs to the area’s highways.

“All of our teams are on the island to re-establish connectivity, which is the main aspect that has affected the island. The rest is functioning normally, the cities are working.”

Chile’s energy minister, Andres Rebolledo, said on Twitter that power had been restored to all but 6,000 customers as of Sunday night.

Chile’s state-run oil company, ENAP , said on Twitter that one of its ships had already landed on Chiloe, ensuring a supply of gasoline for at least the next 15 days. In the moments after the quake, many of the island’s residents had rushed to gas stations, amid fears that damaged roads would cut supply.

The region’s only significant port, in the city of Puerto Montt, reopened after a brief closure, according to the navy, and Chile’s aquaculture service said the zone’s key salmon farming industry was not affected.

Chiloe, a misty, forested island popular with tourists for its traditional culture and pastoral scenery is in a seismically active zone, like much of Chile. As a result, the government has strict procedures to minimize damage and injuries during quakes, and residents and authorities are generally well prepared when they do strike.

“I want to emphasize the exemplary way the affected communities reacted,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said in a speech.

“The government will continue going out into the field, taking all the necessary measures to re-establish normalcy on Chiloe Island.”

(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Antonio de la Jara; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Scientists find deadly scrub typhus bacteria in South America

Picture of a Chigger, known carrier of Scrub typhus in Southeast Asia.

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Scrub typhus, a deadly disease common in southeast Asia and spread by microscopic biting mites known as chiggers, has now taken hold in a part of South America and may have become endemic there, scientists said on Wednesday.

The tropical disease, which kills at least 140,000 people a year in the Asia-Pacific region, has been confirmed in a cluster of cases on a large island off Chile, some 12,000 kilometres from its usual haunts on the other side of the Pacific.

Scrub typhus has been known of for years and the bacteria that causes it was first identified in Japan in 1930.

It is caused by the bacteria, Orientia tsutsugamushi, transmitted by chiggers, and spreads through the lymphatic fluid. Those infected find the illness can begin quite suddenly, with shaking chills, fever, severe headache, infection of the mucous membrane in the eyes, and lymph node swelling.

Until 2006, scrub typhus was thought to be limited to an area called the “tsutsugamushi triangle”, from Pakistan in the west to far eastern Russia in the east to northern Australia in the south.

But writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from Britain’s Oxford University and the Pontificia Universidad Católica and Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile the cases found off of Chile’s mainland “suggest there may be a much wider global distribution than previously understood.”

In 2006, two cases of scrub typhus were found outside the triangle. One, in the Middle East, was caused by a previously unrecorded bacteria related to tsutsugamushi and named Orientia Chuto. The second was found on Chiloé island, just off mainland Chile.

In January 2015 and again in early 2016, three more cases were discovered in Ancud, on the northern coast of Chiloé.

“Scrub typhus is a common disease but a neglected one,” said Paul Newton, director of the Lao–Oxford–Mahosot Hospital Wellcome Trust Research Unit, which collaborated in the study.

“Given that it is known to cause approximately a million clinical cases, and kills at least 140,000 people each year, this evidence of an even bigger burden of disease in another part of the world highlights the need for more research and attention to it.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Chilean student march ends with confrontation, church desecration

Masked demonstrators carry a cross with Jesus Christ during a protest against government education reforms in Santiago

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – A student march in Chile’s capital on Thursday ended with violent confrontations with police and the sacking of a Catholic church as the radicalization of the country’s politically powerful student movement intensified.

University and high school students in Chile have become increasingly disenchanted with the left-leaning government of President Michelle Bachelet.

They have accused Bachelet of reneging on a number of promises regarding social and economic reforms, and are incensed over the government’s failure to complete a planned education overhaul, which has been diluted due to budget constraints. They have promised more protests.

At the end of the march on Thursday, masked protesters entered a church in downtown Santiago and destroyed a 3-meter (9.84 ft) tall statue of Jesus Christ.

Gabriel Iturra, spokesman for the student union Confech, said the act was inappropriate and had been committed by a fringe group with little understanding of the movement’s principles.

Chile’s Interior Ministry Mario Fernandez, who took over the post on Wednesday after the prior minister resigned, also condemned the statue’s destruction.

“What we have just seen is a very troubling symptom of what some people are starting to do to our country,” he told reporters.

Student protests, a regular fixture during the last center-right government of Sebastian Pinera, often end in clashes with police. The massive protests have increased in recent weeks, heaping political pressure on Bachelet’s government.

In the last month, students have staged a protest inside the country’s presidential palace and have occupied and paralyzed dozens of universities and high schools throughout the country.

(Reporting by Antonio de la Jara; Additional reporting by Felipe Iturrieta; Writing by Gram Slattery; Editing by Anthony Esposito, Toni Reinhold)

Massive Quake Shakes Chile’s Capital

At least 8 people are dead and a million people have been displaced because of a massive magnitude 8.3 earthquake in Chile.

Violent aftershocks continue to shake the ground around Santiago and surrounding towns.  Residents were preparing for the possibility of a second strong quake although the tsunami warnings have ended for the region.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says the quake struck around 6:45 p.m., 29 miles west of the capital in a small city of Illapel.  The USGS reported the quake was the strongest to hit the region in 100 years.

Aftershocks of 6.3 and 6.4 have been recorded by the USGS.  A tsunami watch was issued for both California and Hawaii because of the quakes, although they were later retracted.  Residents are still being warned to watch for high waves and significant rip tides.

Chile is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world because of two major plates connecting just off the coastline.  The strongest recorded quake in world history took place in the nation in 1960, magnitude 9.5.