Vatican

Archbishop Charles Scicluna said his mission to the country was a sign of Pope Francis’ closeness to the local church.

A 15th-century copy of a letter Christopher Columbus sent to his royal patrons describing the riches of the New World has been returned to its rightful owner -- the Vatican.

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.

With the children seated around him in the atrium of the Vatican audience hall, Pope Francis answered their questions about his childhood, his school, his vocation and the standard question children ask him, "How did you feel when you were chosen pope?"

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.