BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
SNAP - Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests [Chicago IL]
November 9, 2026
As Pope Leo continues his Latin America tour, SNAP Survivors Network and its partners in Argentina are demanding that the Catholic Church put concrete safeguards in place to prevent clerical abuse in Latin America.
“SNAP demands that the pope do more than simply offer empty platitudes to survivors,” said Angela Walker, SNAP’s Executive Director. “Survivors have lived with the trauma of their abuse often for decades, causing a lifetime of agony. They deserve justice and will need support throughout their lives to begin healing from the abuse they suffered by predatory priests and all clerical abusers.”
Specifically, Latin American survivors are calling for:
- The Catholic Church to implement a clear and effective safeguarding policy requiring the immediate removal from ministry of ALL clergy and religious personnel facing allegations of sexual abuse;
- Accountability and consequences for ALL members of the Church hierarchy who covered up these crimes and fostered a culture of silence;
- Support and reparations for all survivors of clergy and female religious sexual abuse, including the financial, physical, and psychological assistance necessary for their recovery;
- The establishment of public accountability and victim reparations commissions for survivors in Latin America similar to what currently exists in Europe and North America;
- And they implore the pope to seize this historical opportunity to actively commit to defending and protecting children and adolescents in the future.
Sebastián Cuattromo, together with his partner, Silvia Roxana Piceda, founded “Adultxs por los Derechos de la Infancia,” an Argentine organization dedicated to defending the rights of children and adolescents against child sexual abuse. Sebastián himself was a victim of clerical sexual abuse at the age of 13, while he was a student at the Marianist School in Buenos Aires. More than 20 years after the abuse took place, he succeeded in bringing his abuser to trial and securing a criminal conviction, after also resisting an attempt by the institution to silence him.
“We demand that the Pope and the Catholic Church make a deep and effective commitment to addressing child sexual abuse,” said Cuattromo. “For the past 14 years, our organization has been building a collective support network in Argentina and across different countries around the world, with the aim of bringing survivors together and supporting them, while ensuring that our testimonies become tools to protect children and transform their realities. Our work to raise awareness seeks to put an end to the social silence surrounding this crime and to transform the ways in which adult society and its institutions relate to children and adolescents. Only in this way can we move forward toward preventing and eradicating child sexual abuse in Argentina, Latin America and around the world.”
Back in Uruguay, the first stop on the papal tour, survivor Ruben Barrios said he was frustrated that he was refused an audience with the pope when he visited his country.
Barrios held up a poster in Spanish, hoping to catch the eye of the pontiff proclaiming, “Dear Pope Leo. I was a victim of priest abuse. Bishops denied me an audience with you. They only let me give you a letter.”
At the age of 16, Barrios was a victim of abuse by a Redemptorist priest in the Villa Rodrigues parish. When he later reported the abuse to the vice-rector while at the Newark Seminary in 1993, he was told to “simply forget about the matter.”