Prosecutor Emiliano Arias, who led the search in Santiago, said the church raids show that in Chile "we are all subject to common justice."

Despite groundbreaking steps the U.S. Catholic Church has taken to prevent the sexual abuse of minors in the past 16 years, a potential "complacency" in following safety protocols could pose a challenge to those hard-won advances.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will deliver a national apology to child sex abuse victims, as part of the government's response to a long-running inquiry that heard allegations against government and private institutions and prominent individuals in five years of hearings.

The archbishop said his team's pastoral mission includes providing "concrete technical and legal assistance to the dioceses in Chile so they may give adequate responses to each case of sexual abuse of minors committed by clergy or religious."

The multinational initiative, End Clergy Abuse, was announced Thursday at a press conference in Geneva. One after another, more than a dozen members held up their national flags and denounced an individual bishop who had mishandled a case, from the Americas to Africa and Europe in between.

Bishop Barros has been at the center of Chile's growing scandal ever since Francis appointed him bishop of Osorno in 2015 over the objections of the local faithful, his own sex abuse prevention advisers and some of Chile's other bishops.