P. Eleuterio Vásquez González

Padre Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles, a priest of the diocese of Chiclayo, was first accused publicly in November 2023, when a Peruvian woman, Ana María Quispe, began posting on social media about being sexually abused as a child by Vásquez and Padre Ricardo Yesquén Paiva, both of whom were assigned in the early 2000’s to Chiclayo’s San José Obrero parish, to which Ana María Quispe and her family belonged.

Quispe said that she and two other victims had reported their abuse more than a year earlier to prosecutors and, before that, to Bishop Robert Prevost, OSA, who headed the Chiclayo diocese until April 2023, when he left Peru to serve at the Vatican as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.

Quispe reported being abused at different times by both Yesquén and Vásquez; the others alleged abuse by Vásquez only. The alleged abuses of all three girls by Vásquez occurred between 2005 and 2009.

In later media coverage, Quispe recounted that in 2005, when she was nine years old, Yesquén kissed her and put his tongue in her mouth.

The alleged abuse by Padre Eleuterio Vásquez, or “Padre Lute,” as the popular priest was called, occurred in 2007, when Quispe was around 11. Her parents gave the priest permission to take her on an overnight missionary trip to a remote town. In a September 2024 interview on the América Televisión program Cuarto Poder, Quispe said that the priest forced her to share a bed with him, wrapping his legs around her. Another complainant, identified only by the pseudonym “Lucia” in the broadcast, accompanied Vásquez on a similar mission trip when she was 11, and on two different nights, he had her sleep in the same bed with him. Lucia said that while in bed the first night, he embraced her and put his hands on her back, under her shirt, and on the other night, he rubbed his erection against her.

In her social media posts, Quispe said that Bishop Prevost told the three women that he believed them and encouraged them to report to civil authorities. In the meantime, he said, he would tell Vásquez to leave his parish while the women’s claims were investigated. According to Quispe, Prevost also said that Vásquez, who he characterized as a trusted pastor with a strong following, had admitted to the abuse, apologized, and asked for the names of the complainants. As for Padre Yesquén, the bishop told them, he was already out of ministry due to poor health.

[See Ms. Quispe’s Facebook posts on November 13, 2023 and November 16, 2023.]

Quispe’s social media posts attracted local media coverage, which in turn caused the Chiclayo diocese to publicly acknowledge the allegations for the first time. In a seven-point statement issued 12/12/2023, it stated that the prosecutor had closed the case “due to the statute of limitations and lack of evidence,” and that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), “seeing that the accusations against the accused priest [BA: Vásquez] had not been sufficiently proven,” had to decided to “archive the case pro nunc [for now].”

But because of the public attention, the diocese said, the apostolic administrator of Chiclayo, Monsignor Guillermo Cornejo Monzón, had “decided to reopen the case for greater clarity regarding the facts.” Vaszquez at this point was again in active ministry, serving at St Ignacio in Santa Cruz. The diocese pledged that it would again instruct him to step down.

Later, the diocese would stipulate the following timeline: Prevost gave the DDF the dossier of his preliminary investigation into Vásquez on July 21, 2022;  the prosecutor told the young women in early 2023 that the case had been filed because of prescription; Prevost forwarded the prosecutor’s decision to the DDF on April 3, 2023; he started his new Vatican role on April 12, 2023; and the DDF “emitted” its pro nunc ruling on August 10, 2023.

For three months in 2024, from May to August, Quispe and the other victims enlisted a Peruvian priest, Fr. Ricardo Coronado Arrascue, to serve as their canon lawyer. While working with him, Quispe became more vocal publicly in criticizing Bishop Prevost’s handling of the case, accusing him of failing to investigate Vásquez and of letting him stay in ministry. It later emerged that Coronado had ties to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, the corrupt and abuse-ridden religious association disciplined and ultimately suppressed by Pope Francis, with Bishop Prevost’s help. Coronado had to stop representing the women in August 2024, when the Peruvian bishops’ conference ordered him to cease acting as a canon lawyer, due to allegations of sexual misconduct. In an interview published by NCR in September 2025, Quispe acknowledged that it seemed that Coronado had taken her case to further his agenda against Pope Francis and Cardinal Prevost.

In October 2025, El País reported that Quispe had met with the new Chicayo bishop, Edinson Edgardo Farfán, on April 23, 2025. The bishop previously had told Quispe that he would be willing to re-open the case against Vásquez. But when Quispe and the others arrived at the meeting, the bishop told them that Vásquez had been removed from the clerical state, at his own request, and that therefore the case was permanently closed. According to Quispe, the bishop said that while Vásquez had not admitted to the abuse, he also told the bishop that he didn’t consider the alleged acts to be crimes. The bishop explained that processing Vásquez under canon law would have taken months. He promised to issue the victims a public letter of apology for the diocese’s handling of the case and to cover their psychological expenses. As of October 1, 2025, when El País published its article, neither of those promises had been fulfilled.