Pope Francis has apologised to victims of clerical abuse, saying he unknowingly wounded them by the way he defended a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse by his mentor. Speaking to journalists on his flight to Rome from Lima, Peru, the Pope said he only realised later that his words erroneously implied that victims’ accusations were credible only with concrete proof. “To hear that the Pope says to their face, ‘Bring me a letter with proof’, is a slap in the face,” he said. Pope Francis was referring to a response he gave in Iquique, Chile, when reporters asked about his support for Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, given accusations that the bishop may have been aware of abuse perpetrated by his former mentor, Fr Fernando Karadima. The priest was sentenced to a life of prayer and penance by the Vatican after he was found guilty of sexually abusing boys. “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I will speak. There is not one piece of evidence against him. It is calumny. Is that clear?” the Pope said. Asked about the incident during the flight back to Rome, Francis said he should have used the word “evidence”, not “proof.” The way he phrased his response, he said, caused confusion and was “not the best word to use to approach a wounded heart … Of course, I know that there are many abused people who cannot bring proof [or] they don’t have it,” he said. “Or at times they have it but they are ashamed and cover it up and suffer in silence. The tragedy of the abused is tremendous.” But the Pope said he stood by his defence of Bishop Barros, because he was “personally convinced” of the bishop’s innocence after the case was investigated twice. He said that while “covering up abuse is an abuse in itself”, if he punished Bishop Barros without moral certainty, “I would be committing the crime of a bad judge.” During his week-long trip to Chile and Peru the Pope decried corruption, rapacious consumerism, environmental devastation, organised crime, violence against women and industrial activities such as mining and industrial agriculture. He met sex abuse victims privately, blessed the marriage of two flight attendants on a plane, and addressed indigenous people. At a Mass in Lima on his last day in Peru he told an estimated 1.3 million faithful that Jesus “continues to walk on our streets. He knocks today, as he did yesterday, on our doors and hearts, in order to rekindle the flame of hope.”