(PERU)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
July 11, 2025
By Edgar Beltrán
A Lima priest accused of sexual misconduct requested laicization last week, after The Pillar reported charges that the Lima archdiocese mishandled the allegations against him, in a process that some alleged amounted to a cover-up for a priest close to Lima’s Cardinal Carlos Castillo.
And while Castillo, 75, has faced significant criticism over his leadership of the archdiocese in recent weeks, the cardinal pushed back last week, telling Catholics that he enjoys the confidence of Pope Leo XIV, and expects to remain in office for five more years.
—
The Pillar broke the news last month that the Archdiocese of Lima was accused of mishandling an investigation into Fr. Nilton Zárate Rengifo, who was accused of harassing a religious sister, solicitation in the confessional, and attempted absolution of an accomplice in a sexual sin, but had not been subject to a formal canonical process.
After the allegations against Zárate broke, the priest sent a letter to Castillo formally requesting his dismissal from the clerical state.
Before the request, Zárate served in parish ministry and taught in the local faculty of theology. While had had reportedly considered laicization amid the allegations against him, he did not petition to leave the clerical state until The Pillar’s recent reporting on the subject.
“A few days ago, after the [Pillar] report, he formally sent a letter to the cardinal requesting his laicization,” another source confirmed.
The Pillar obtained a 2024 affidavit signed by a contemplative nun who alleges that Zárate sexually harassed and manipulated her amid a relationship of spiritual direction and confession which began in 2018.
The allegations would seem to include potentially the canonical crime of attempting to absolve an accomplice of a sin against the sixth commandment, a crime reserved in canon law to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Those charges were briefly investigated by the archdiocese’s judicial vicar, but a formal canonical process was never conducted.
The nun’s canon lawyer complained in a letter sent to Cardinal Castillo, and obtained by The Pillar, that the case was investigated as a sexual abuse case, but that the priest was not investigated for the grave delicts — major canonical crimes — of absolving an accomplice in a sexual sin and of making sexual advances on the occasion of confession.
The nun charged in her affidavit that Zárate became increasingly intimate with her, to the point of solicitation of sexual favors, in addition to becoming controlling of her daily life.
“In private or on the phone, he called me ‘my child’ instead of ‘sister.’ He held my hands during spiritual direction or confession. In November 2019, I [went on a trip] for a few days to see if it stopped, but he told me I should call him daily and tell him how I was. In March, we had our yearly spiritual exercises… and he never stopped calling me, two or three times a day, even in the early morning or during the night,” the testimony alleged.
The sister claimed that the priest became increasingly controlling, and made explicit sexual requests of the sister, including asking for intimate pictures.
In one incident, Zárate reportedly told the nun that he was masturbating during a phone call and asked her to do the same.
According to the affidavit, the priest demanded she keep their relationship secret, told her not to confess to other priests, and insisted on physical contact before granting absolution.
“He asked to embrace me before absolution. He insisted I shouldn’t talk to another priest about ‘us,’ and said it was better that no one else knew.”
According to the sister’s testimony, she eventually disclosed the situation to another priest, and made a formal complaint to the archdiocese, which sent the judicial vicar, Fr. Jorge Andrés López Vignand, and a priest, Fr. Edwin Limas, to investigate the situation in August 2020.
The Pillar also obtained a written statement from a senior cleric who witnessed the archdiocesan investigation. That priest said the approach was “disrespectful, authoritarian, and lacked the most minimal human sensitivity.”
“Fr. López was disparaging and authoritarian. Throughout the interrogation, Fr. López twisted, changing tendentiously the statements of the sister and dictating words and phrases to the secretary [Fr. Limas] that were of his own making, and were not the [words] of the sister,” the statement said.
The priest also claimed that the nun was forced to sign a statement regarding the matter despite the fact that it didn’t reflect her own words.
The advocate charged in a letter sent to the DDF, obtained by The Pillar, that the accused priest, Fr. Zárate, was being protected because of his friendship with Cardinal Castillo.
“The sister showed great hesitation in signing the documents because they didn’t faithfully reflect her statements. She did it because of the distress of the moment” and because she uncomfortable contradicting the authority of the archbishop’s investigators, a statement from the cleric explained.
“I had the certainty that we were witnessing a clear cover-up of the accused priest and a re-victimization [of the sister] for not giving credit to her statements.”
After she was interviewed by archdiocesan investigators, the nun alleged she was never contacted again by investigators and received no formal notification about the outcome of the case. Instead, she said she was informally told in November 2023 by her abbess, relaying a message from Auxiliary Bishop Juan José Salaverry, that the case had been closed.
The nun’s canon lawyer has complained that the case was investigated as a sexual abuse case, but that the priest was not investigated for the grave delicts — major canonical crimes — of attempting to absolve an accomplice in a sexual sin and of making sexual advances on the occasion of confession.
Senior diocesan sources told The Pillar that the dysfunction in investigating abuse cases has led the judicial vicariate of Lima to become a revolving door, with several employees and judges of the diocesan tribunal being fired in recent weeks, including Fr. Edwin Limas, who served as the notary in the interrogation of the sister during the brief canonical investigation against Zárate.
“Castillo removed most judges appointed by his predecessor, stopping many investigations and a couple of months ago, he kicked out the judicial vicar, Fr. Jorge López. He appointed one of his auxiliary bishops, Bishop Salaverry, and he resigned two weeks ago,” a Lima priest told The Pillar.
“Fr. López was already 82 years old, but there’s the feeling in the archdiocese that he was taking his job too seriously for the cardinal’s liking,” another priest told The Pillar.
After changing two judicial vicars in two months, Cardinal Castillo closed the judicial vicariate for a month before appointing another canonist to the post.
—
After The Pillar reported on several dysfunctions in the Archdiocese of Lima in investigating abuse allegations, financial irregularities in diocesan schools, and an alleged punishment of theologically conservative priests, Cardinal Castillo said in a July 4 homily that he “had received the pope’s ratification as Archbishop of Lima for five years, at least until I turn 80.”
The cardinal also defended himself against criticism from the local school teachers’ association, known by its acronym AIEC.
“There is always a group of killjoys, the Pharisees… These days we have had a lot of gossip and lies, we are used to people believing gossip and lies, and also in the AIEC… The important thing is how we walk in the way of the Lord, but those killjoys complicate things when things are very simple, both in the Church of Lima and in the AIEC… We have always been attentive to criticism and have often been self-critical of the mistakes we have made, and we are willing to be self-critical and correct ourselves,” he said in the homily.
Castillo implied that his predecessor, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, was responsible for financial malpractice, although several local sources told The Pillar that Castillo ordered an audit of the diocesan accounts when he arrived as archbishop in 2019, which did not discover particular irregularities.
Still, the cardinal insisted he had been the subject of a smear campaign.
“Pharisees always want to distort the truth because it is true that we need to correct our mistakes and because there are still many things to correct, but not because we are hiding anything; everything is clear. So we have to keep track of everything, and in fact, the Vatican already has the first accounts [of what] we have found and the clarification,” he said.
“Here… we don’t sweep dirty laundry under the rug. We take it into account and report it. In due course, the Lord will bring justice. We’ll see when,” he added.