Prelature of Huamachuco, Peru

Return to main database page. See abbreviations and posting policy. Send corrections.

Danielle Davis October 22, 2026 No Comments

Search results for Prelature of Huamachuco, Peru

3 Accused in this Diocese

    P. Emeterio Castañeda Muñoz

    Status: Accused

    Diocese: Prelature of Huamachuco, Peru

    Emeterio Marcial Castañeda Muñoz, a diocesan priest of the prelature of Huamachuco in northern Peru, is accused of taking part in parties in Trujillo in the late 1990s at which priests had sex with teenage boys for money. Allegations against him were reported to the congressional commission as well as to the media outlet Connectas, which in July 2020 published a blockbuster investigative piece on abuse and cover-up in the prelature of Huamachuco and the archdiocese of Trujillo.

    A man who spoke to Connectas as "Andrés" said that between 1996 and 1998, when he was 16, Castañeda and four other priests organized or attended weekend night parties in Trujillo parishes and in a private house where they had sex with minors for money. The congressional commission on sexual abuse, as summarized by the website Sudaca, named a complainant, J.M.B.R., whose account matches that of "Andrés:" it said that Castañeda and three other priests invited him at age 15 to parties of alcohol, cigarettes and sex, held from 1996 to 1998 at the parish of El Buen Pastor in El Porvenir, at other places near Trujillo and at the private house, where priests met boys aged 15 to 17.

    Fr Á.C.M. told ACI Prensa that Castañeda and Tulio Montenegro were the most frequent visitors to a house Bishop Sebastián Ramis Torrens bought in Trujillo for travelling clergy, where, he said, many atrocities were committed. According to Connectas, Castañeda's alleged victims had already told their story to La República's magazine Domingo in 2000. In a letter of March 18, 2019 to the journalist Melissa Goytizolo, Huamachuco priests who had formed a commission to listen to victims named Castañeda among the priests they said were implicated in sexual crimes.

    On January 2, 2016, a group of Huamachuco priests had written to Bishop Ramis objecting to what they said was the favorable treatment he gave to Castañeda and four other priests against whom there were already accusations of sexual crimes. Ramis, a Franciscan of the Third Order Regular, had been the prelate since 1991. After a television report on abuse in the prelature in February 2016, Ramis set up a commission of inquiry; the prelature later said it suspended the priests involved on March 1, 2016 and sent its findings to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which directed that administrative penal processes be opened.

    ACI Prensa reported in August 2020 that both church and civil authorities had acquitted Castañeda and three other accused diocesan priests for lack of evidence. Sudaca, drawing on the congressional report, says the cases of the five victims it examined, J.M.B.R.'s among them, were closed by prosecutors as time-barred or for lack of evidence. In August 2020, Castañeda reportedly was still serving as a priest in the prelature of Huamachuco. His current status is not publicly known.

    P. Manuel Mendoza Ruiz

    Status: Accused

    Diocese: Prelature of Huamachuco, Peru

    Manuel Mendoza Ruiz, a priest of the Prelature of Huamachuco in northern Peru, was the prelature's chancery secretary when he was accused of sexually touching a 15-year-old boy in 2015. According to the account given by the victim to the media outlet Connectas, Mendoza, a friend of his family, went with him to a weekend retreat in Chimbote in May 2015. On the bus back to Huamachuco, the boy said, he woke to find the priest's hand inside his trousers; Mendoza apologized, and then tried again.

    Two seminarians had reportedly accused him earlier of seeking sex.

    Bishop Ramis was told of the accusation in January 2016 and heard the boy in person. According to the mother, the boy's statement was torn up and she was called a liar; Ramis says he tore it up because she wanted no action.

    In 2016, following publicity about alleged abuses in Huamachuco, Ramis suspended Mendoza. In August 2018, Bishop Cisneros, who headed the prelature as apostolic administrator after Ramis' retirement, provisionally lifted the suspension. In April 2019, Cisneros barred Mendoza from presenting himself as a priest pending psychological therapy, but the bishop accused the boy of having contradictory accounts.

    In May 2017, the mother filed a criminal complaint for acts against modesty. The church authorities called it ongoing in mid-2020, and a 2023 column says it was closed.

    Mendoza denied the accusation and says the Church never found him guilty. In August 2020, he was living with his family in Huamachuco, not exercising ministry. The Prelature of Caravelí had agreed to take him.

    P. Tulio Montenegro Infante

    Status: Case Dismissed

    Diocese: Prelature of Huamachuco, Peru

    Tulio Armando Montenegro Infante was a priest of the Prelature of Huamachuco in northern Peru in 2016 when he was accused by at least four men of sexually abusing them as boys or young men between 1988 and 2001, in parishes of the prelature and in the archdiocese of Trujillo.

    One victim was a secondary-school pupil and altar boy when Montenegro sexually assaulted him in 1988. Another was a seminarian of 18.  A third victim was a young man who lived in the priest’s parish and says he was repeatedly raped from 1995 to 2001. The fourth victim was a teenager in 1996-1998 attending parties in Trujillo where priests paid minors for sex.

    One victim says he reported Montenegro to Bishop Sebastián Ramis in 1991. (Ramis ran the prelature of Huamachuco from 1990 to 2018.) Another says Ramis told him not to report and offered to send him to study in Spain. A group of whistleblower priests confronted Ramis in January 2016 about Montenegro and other abusive clerics. Ramis set up a commission of inquiry, but only after a TV program aired the accusations in February 2016.

    Ramis says he suspended the accused priests in March 2016. His successor, apostolic administrator Bishop Cisneros, provisionally lifted Montenegro's suspension in August 2018, then in April 2019 barred him permanently from public ministry, while telling two accusers that their statements were contradictory and exaggerated. The penalty was under appeal at the Vatican in 2020.

    The criminal complaints were time-barred or closed for lack of evidence, according to ACI Prensa and the congressional commission.

    Montenegro denied the allegations. Banned from public ministry, he was head of a state-run high school in Pataz as of August 2020.

Return to main database page. See abbreviations and posting policy. Send corrections.

Our Database of Publicly Accused does not state or imply that individuals facing allegations are guilty of a crime or liable for civil claims. The reports contained in the database are merely allegations. The U.S. legal system presumes that a person accused of or charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Similarly, individuals who may be defendants in civil actions are presumed not to be liable for such claims unless a plaintiff proves otherwise. Admissions of guilt or liability are not typically a part of civil or private settlements. For more information, see our posting policy.