CHICLAYO (PERU)
The Tablet [Market Harborough, England]
May 15, 2025
By Bess Twiston Davies
‘Pope Leo XIV has been the most responsive to these cases in the Peruvian Church, and he has listened to us. He has allowed us to achieve justice.’
The Bishop of Chiclayo refuted claims that Pope Leo XIV mishandled allegations of abuse by clergy in his Peruvian diocese.
Bishop Edinson Farfán, who replaced Robert Prevost as Bishop of Chiclayo in 2024, described the claims as a “lie”, saying his predecessor had “listened” and “respected the processes” of handling accusations.
He added: “This process is still ongoing … believe me, I am the most interested person in justice being served and, above all, in being able to help the victims.”
Farfán referred to claims that Prevost had failed to open a proper canonical inquiry into a priest accused of sexual assault.
Three sisters reported Fr Eleutorio Vásquez for sexual harassment to Prevost in April 2022. The alleged events occurred while they were nine, 11 and 14 years old, before the Chicagoan was appointed Bishop of Chiclayo in 2015.
Prevost said he believed the victims, asking them to supply a written complaint for the diocese. He apologised to them on behalf of the Church, according to Ana Maria Quispe, the oldest sister.
She said Prevost had referred them to the diocesan “listening centre” he had established weeks earlier to offer professional help to abuse survivors. A Peruvian source told the Crux news outley that one sister had accepted the offer of counselling.
According to the ultra-conservative website infovaticana.com, Prevost informed Quispe the complaint might take a little time because Vásquez was popular as the promotor of the sole eucharistic miracle in Peru – a vision of the Child Jesus in 1649.
Prevost encouraged the victims to open a civil case, telling Quispe that “the Church did not have the means to investigate and the Church could use a civil investigation to sanction [Vasquez]”. But he also warned her that as the accusations dated from 2004, the civil case might close because of the statute of limitations.
In April 2022, Prevost opened a local diocesan inquiry. In July 2022, he sent the findings to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (DDF). The civil case was closed due to the statute of limitations. The DDF later closed the case – influenced by the action of civil authorities in Peru – on the grounds of a lack of evidence
Fr Vásquez later admitted his guilt. Transferred from Chiclayo to the Diocese of Cajamara in June 2022, while the investigation was open, he continued to celebrate Mass until he was barred from ministry in November 2023.
In 2023, a 12-minute documentary on the Peruvian television programme Cuarto Poder explored the case and Quispe spoke to the press.
The Diocese of Chiclayo issued a statement, giving the facts of the initial inquiry. In a seven-point statement it said Vásquez was subject to “cautionary measures” and banned from priestly ministry. The case was re-opened by the apostolic administrator of Chiclayo to “clarify the facts”, the statement added.
Infovaticana.comreported that the vicar of an inter-diocesan tribunal asked to investigate the case told Quispe in November 2023 that Prevost’s investigation “had been no use at all”.
Earlier in 2023, Prevost had left Peru for Rome following his appointment as prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops and president of Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
The re-opened case is still pending with the DDF.
Farfán told AP News the new Pope had been “sensitive towards the victims” and was “still accompanying them”.
The bishop said he had accompanied the alleged victims, saying: “I have asked for their forgiveness, we have wept together, and they have undoubtedly been treated well – there is a close relationship. I hope we can reach satisfactory closure.”
Farfán continued: “Pope Leo XIV has been the most responsive to these cases in the Peruvian Church, and he has listened to us. He has allowed us to achieve justice.”
Journalists in Peru refuted allegations of a “cover up”, linking them to a controversial Peruvian Church movement suppressed by Pope Francis last October.
They said a priest who had once represented the victims as a canon lawyer was linked to the Sodalitum Christianae Vitae (SCV).
According to Crux, the allegations against Prevost emerged only after Fr Ricardo Coronado, a former Augustinian and canon lawyer, began to represent the victims in May 2024.
That August he was barred by the Peruvian bishops from practicing canon law due to allegations of sexual misconduct.
He was later defrocked after the Diocese of Cajamarca reported Coronado to the Dicastery for Clergy for an unspecified “crime against the Sixth Commandment”.
The journalist Pedro Salinas, who co-authored a book about the SCV titled Mitad Monjes, Mitad Soldados (“Half Monks, Half Soldiers”), said: “The complaints come from the quarries of the Sodalitium, and aim to discredit and delegitimise [Prevost] as a consequence of what has begun to happen with the SCV.”
Speaking to the Spanish website Religion Digital days before the Pope’s election, Salinas added: “Robert Prevost always took up the fight for victims [of the SCV] and put himself in their shoes. He always put the victims front and centre.”
He said Prevost was one of only five bishops in Peru to pay heed to SCV victims, thought to number about 100 in total.
The movement is reported by the Spanish daily El País to have amassed a fortune by misinterpreting part of a Vatican concordat with Peru. This allowed the SCV to buy nine luxury graveyards, which, under the terms of the concordat were exempt from tax, because the movement categorised them as “missions”.
Another allegation involves a priest accused of abuse in the Archdiocese of Chicago being placed in an Augustinian friary two blocks distant from a school.
Crux quoted an Augustinian in Chicago who said Fr James Ray had been placed in the friary because the superior, a licensed counsellor, was supervising Ray’s safety plan. The school’s location was not considered a hazard at the time, because the decision was made prior to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Dallas Charter of 2002. This prohibits the placement of accused priests near schools.
In a statement, Michael Airdo, lawyer for the Augustinian province of the Midwest, said that the decision to place Ray in St John Stone Friary from 2000 until 2002 “was an accommodation to the late Cardinal Francis George”, then-Archbishop of Chicago.
Pope Leo XIV served as prior general of the Augustinian order worldwide in 2001-13.