CHICLAYO (PERU)
El País [Madrid, Spain]
October 1, 2025
By Paola Nagovitch and Íñigo Domínguez
Ana María Quispe tells EL PAÍS that the Church is obstructing payment for her psychologist, and that an accused priest is escaping accountability by leaving the clergy. Pope Leo speaks out for the first time: ‘There has been a lot of manipulation of the case’
In 2018, EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Catholic Church and has an updated database of all known cases. If you are aware of any cases that have not been reported, please write to us at: abusos@elpais.es. If the case is in Latin America, the address is: abusosamerica@elpais.es.
───────────
Ana María Quispe, a 29-year-old Peruvian, is a broken woman. In addition to the sexual assaults she reported in the diocese of Chiclayo (Peru) in 2022, when Robert Francis Prevost was bishop there, she later found herself at the center of a global media storm over accusations that the future Pope had not acted properly. In reality, she was the victim of a smear campaign against Leo XIV, as this newspaper revealed in its investigation of the case. Now, speaking with EL PAÍS — it is the first time she has done so with a European media outlet since the Pope’s election — she confirms that the canon lawyer who took on her defense, the Peruvian priest Ricardo Coronado, used her and the two other victims who reported abuse: “It ended very badly. What we know is that his intention was never to help us. He had his own interests, that much is very clear to us. What were they? We have no idea. Do we want to know? Not really, because it honestly scares us,” says Quispe.
This victim found herself in the middle of something far larger than herself. The Chiclayo case was used against Prevost by ultraconservative sectors in a campaign that even tried to prevent him from being elected pope. The reason was the future pontiff’s work in Peru against the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, a powerful organization with sect-like characteristics accused of dozens of abuses. In June, in an interview with this newspaper, the lawyer denied taking part in any campaign. Coronado, who had ties to the group, was eventually expelled from the priesthood by the Vatican in December 2024 for sexual crimes.
But after the media storm, the victims’ situation is the same — or worse. At several points during a two-hour video call from Lima, Quispe can’t help but cry. Two and a half years after filing her complaint, she remains deeply critical of how the Church has handled her case.
She says that Prevost, who left the diocese a year after her report in April 2023, treated them well. But she recounts that what followed has been a desperate process and a new form of victimization. Quispe believes that the future pope did nothing afterward — although the Vatican insists he opened an investigation — or at the very least, that no one ever informed the victims about what the Church was doing.
Pope Leo XIV, for his part, has just spoken about the case for the first time in a book, admitting that it became “more complicated” after his transfer and that the delay in the process “has made it very painful.” “Honestly, I feel very bad about it,” he acknowledged. At the same time, he stressed that “there has been a lot of manipulation of the case, which has caused even greater pain.”
Quispe also reveals one last surprise: in April, the three victims were summoned again, and the current bishop of Chiclayo informed them that the accused priest, Eleuterio Vásquez, had requested to leave the priesthood, meaning there will be no further proceedings. Quispe denounces that, five months later, even this has not been resolved, and that the public letter of apology they were promised as a final gesture of consolation has never arrived.
She also claims that the diocese has put obstacles in the way of reimbursing their psychological treatment expenses, insisting they cannot accept sworn statements as proof, only invoices. They have even scolded the victims for this, according to one of the letters reviewed by this newspaper. In it, a diocesan official warns that they are making a “tremendous effort” to cover the expenses and will only pay “upon presentation of appropriate and legitimate documents.” “I have been informed by the accounting department of the Diocese of Chiclayo that there will be no further deposits if they are not justified by the requested documentation,” warns the diocesan official. Quispe is outraged: “If the diocese is making an enormous effort to cover these expenses, they should let the sexual abusers know, not us.”
How the Pope acted: “He told me he believed me”
Quispe claims she kept the abuse buried inside her for years. It wasn’t until after having her daughter, when she had to leave the child to go back to work, that she remembered it. “But it was impossible for me, and I didn’t know why. Then, digging deeper into my thoughts, what happened to me as a child with Ricardo Yesquén came to mind. And I was struck by a guilty conscience: ‘Now that your daughter is young, you suddenly think that it could happen to her, and that’s why you’re thinking of doing something about it. You kept quiet for so long, and it has probably happened to many girls.’” According to her subsequent complaint, Yesquén, a priest, abused her in 2005 when she was nine years old: he kissed her on the mouth, inserting his tongue.
It was 2020 when Quispe spoke about it for the first time with Prevost, a detail little known until now, since it had only been reported that she contacted him in 2022. Peru was just entering its Covid-19 lockdown, so they spoke by phone. She says that the now Pope Leo XIV “asked for her forgiveness in the name of the Church.” “He told me he believed me and encouraged me to report it. He told me that if necessary, he would accompany me. He told me to think about it,” she recalls. However, the coronavirus lockdown dissuaded her.
In 2022, she began to think about it again. Then she unearthed another memory, of another abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of Eleuterio Vásquez, the parish priest of Eten, known as Father Lute. According to Quispe, whose family was deeply involved with the Church, in 2007 she went on a trip with Vásquez, who touched her while she slept, hugging her: “But at that moment, I just thought it was something that didn’t happen. That he wanted to protect me, that he was like an uncle, and that was it.” Speaking with people close to her, she discovered that the same thing had happened to two other women, between 2005 and 2009, when they were between nine and 13 years old.
Criticism of the Church: “They completely took me for a ride”
The three women decided to file a complaint, and in April 2022, they met with Prevost. “We were very ashamed because, as Catholics, we saw that Lute did so much good,” Quispe recalls. According to her, the then-bishop asked for their forgiveness on behalf of the Church and encouraged them to file a civil complaint. “He said, ‘Just as he does so much good, he also has the power to do so much harm to the people who approach him. So I feel very sorry for Lute because we have projects and because Lute attracts even more people than I do, but of course, that gives him the power to do great harm, and what you are doing helps the Church, to clean up the Church.’”
Regarding Vásquez, Prevost said that he would ask him to leave the parish; as for Yesquén, he stated that he was very ill (suffering from a degenerative disease) and no longer close to people. “We came away from that meeting with Monsignor Prevost like, wow! The church can help us. The church listens to us, something can be done,” Quispe recalls.
But from then on, she laments, everything became more and more disappointing. They were sent to the diocesan listening center, where they were helped by a priest who was a psychology student. Quispe admits that at the time it was very helpful, but now she believes it wasn’t enough. She complains that the support she received, far from being psychological, was more spiritual. “Now, in 2025, I realize I was incredibly naive and ignorant. They completely took me for a ride back then,” she says.
Quispe maintains that Prevost never opened an investigation into the allegations, although the Vatican has asserted that he did. The future Pope then left the diocese, and four months later, in the summer of 2023, the investigation was provisionally closed. Quispe insists she never knew anything about this, nor was she ever informed. “They didn’t tell us anything, nothing about any investigation in the Church,” she maintains. But when she realized that Father Lute was still celebrating Mass, she decided to speak about the case on social media, and everything came to light. The Diocese of Chiclayo then reopened the case and sent it back to Rome, where it remains open.
A lawyer with “his own interests”
After speaking out about the abuse on social media, Quispe admits she went through a very difficult few months. “I was very upset. Because I also started receiving a lot of complaints against Lute. A lot of disgusting cases. It was very tough. A lot of attacks, too,” she says. The young woman says she was isolated, without friends, because her social life was within the Church.
She also had many health problems: “I used to get very sick. I suffered from debilitating migraines. I mean, I was alone in my bed, I would recover for three days, and then I would be in bed for a week, two weeks.”
It was then that she connected with Coronado, a canon lawyer who had been recommended to her and who, it turned out, was very interested in her case — and in the bishop of Chiclayo, who was actually an old acquaintance: “He told me he had investigated many cases and would help me. That Prevost was involved in many things, but that he would help me.”
EL PAÍS has reported that Coronado, a former Peruvian Augustinian who left the order in 2001, had connections with members of Sodalicio. At the time, the organization was under investigation by Pope Francis, with help from Prevost, who had personally involved himself in defending its victims in Peru. Coronado entered the scene at a critical moment for the Sodalicio, which saw its very existence threatened — it was ultimately dissolved by Pope Francis in January 2025 — and used the case, with support from ultraconservative digital media, to attack Prevost by accusing him of covering up abuse.
Quispe says they felt pressured by the lawyer. He arranged for them to appear on a television program and promoted the idea that Prevost had covered up the abuses. U.S. author Elise Ann Allen, who also spoke with Quispe, writes in her biography of the Pontiff, León XIV: ciudadano del mundo, misionero del siglo XXI (meaning Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21st Century), that Quispe felt Coronado wanted the victims “to do everything as quickly as possible, and they felt they didn’t fully understand what was happening.”
Allen also argues that Coronado, an ultraconservative, acted out of a “deep personal grudge” against Prevost dating back to the 1990s, due to their “ideological differences” within the Augustinian order. He viewed the order as too aligned with progressive ideas and liberation theology.
Quispe recounts that the lawyer began treating the victims poorly, harassing them and blaming them for the negative reaction he was receiving. In the end, they decided to cut ties with him. “His intention was never to help us. He had his own interests,” she concludes.
Leo XIV’s version: “They have been victimized and re-victimized”
Leo XIV has also spoken publicly about the case for the first time, in his first ever interview, which is included in Allen’s book: “I try to understand and be close to the people who come to me and tell me they’ve been victims in one way or another, and I tried to do that in this case […] I tried to explain to them what I do with all victims in terms of their rights, in terms of a certain empathy and listening to them. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a case where I didn’t believe the victim. I have to say that, because when you talk to people and you know they’re suffering, that suffering comes from somewhere. It’s not made up. And I told them from the beginning that I believed them, and I offered them different types of support, including psychological and legal support.”
Prevost acknowledges in the book that these processes “are very slow.” “This particular process has become more complicated because not long after they presented their accusations, I was transferred from the diocese. The amount of time this entire process has taken has made it very painful. I sincerely feel very bad about it. But in the midst of all this, as it has become known, there has been a lot of manipulation of the case, which has caused even greater pain to many people, but primarily to them. I am very sorry for that.”
What’s more, Prevost acknowledges in the interview that during the conclave, he was concerned about the media campaign against him. When asked if he thought he could become pope, he responds: “There were some rumors. But I also thought about the case you asked me about earlier [the allegations in Chiclayo], which was a concern for some of the other cardinals, whether this issue of sexual abuse was going to be a problem.”
Prevost concludes with a reflection on the victims: “They have been victimized and re-victimized. It has been difficult for them to endure this for several years, for the process to become so public, which the diocese did not want, but circumstances fueled this […] None of this, in my opinion, has helped the victims, it has not helped the Church, but unfortunately, that has been the case.”
The final surprise: the accused priest leaves the clergy
Quispe says she met in January of this year with the new bishop of Chiclayo, Edinson Edgardo Farfán, who was appointed in 2024. “And he said to me, ‘What do you want us to do?’” And I replied: “You have a pedophile there! How do I have to tell you? You tell me what you’re going to do with that pedophile you have there.”
According to Quispe, Farfán invited her to report the case again to the Church and assured her that this time it would be different. The meeting took place on April 23, but when the victims arrived, they were informed that Father Eleuterio had requested to leave the priesthood. Therefore, they were told, there was nothing more to be done because he would no longer be part of the clergy. “We asked if that was the end of it, and they told us that is the maximum penalty,” Quispe recalls.
Quispe says she was told during the meeting that Father Lute had not admitted the acts but had argued that he did not consider them a crime. “So it’s not that he hasn’t confessed,” Quispe insists. “He has confessed, but he says he doesn’t consider it a crime […] I don’t think they believe putting yourself on a person, a child, is normal, that it’s just a sin and that’s it,” she adds.
The diocese told them that the process to remove Father Lute from the clergy would take months, promised to later issue a public letter of apology to the victims, and to cover their psychological expenses, according to diocesan letters from June to September of this year. Five months later, the suspension is still being processed and the victims have not yet received the apology. “I think there should at least be a public letter of apology, for the poor process from the start and for the public statements they have made,” Quispe concludes.