EVERY Chilean bishop has offered to resign over a sex abuse and cover-up scandal, in the biggest shake-up in the Catholic Church’s long-running abuse saga.

The bishops announced at the end of an emergency summit with Pope Francis that all 31 active bishops and three retired ones in Rome had signed a document offering to resign and putting their fate in the hands of the Pope.

Francis can accept the resignations one by one, reject them or delay a decision. It is the first known time an entire national bishops conference has offered to resign en masse over scandal, and laid bare the devastation the abuse crisis has caused the Catholic Church in Chile. alls had mounted for resignations after details emerged of the contents of a 2300-page Vatican report into the Chilean scandal leaked yesterday.

Francis had accused the bishops of destroying evidence of sex crimes, pressuring investigators to minimise abuse accusations and showing “grave negligence” in protecting children from paedophile priests. In one of the most damning documents from the Vatican, Francis said the entire Chilean church hierarchy was collectively responsible for “grave defects” in handling cases and the resulting loss of credibility for the Catholic Church.

“No one can exempt himself and place the problem on the shoulders of the others,” Francis wrote in the document, published by Chilean T13 television.