Victims’ group alleges Pope Leo XIV mishandled sexual abuse cases involving priests in Chicago and Peru

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Six weeks before American Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, the activist group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed a complaint against him, along with other church leaders, to the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

The group alleged Prevost “harmed the vulnerable and caused scandal” by mishandling two situations – in Chicago in 2000, and in Peru in 2022 – involving priests accused of sexual abuse.

The group said that as provincial supervisor in Chicago for the Augustinian order in 2000, Prevost allowed a priest accused of abusing at least 13 minors to live at the Augustinian order’s St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park, half a block from St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School. The priest, Father James Ray, had been barred since 1991 from performing parish work or being alone with minors – restrictions the Archdiocese of Chicago noted when it asked Prevost to allow Ray to live at the friary, the complaint said.

“The school was never notified,” said SNAP spokeswoman Sarah Pearson. In 2002, after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops tightened their policies, Ray was moved from the priory and removed from public ministry. He was removed from the priesthood in 2012.

Patrick Thronson, an attorney who represented a plaintiff in an abuse case against Ray and the Archdiocese of Chicago, said he found it shocking that Ray was allowed to live so close to a school, though Thronson added he wasn’t aware of the details of Prevost’s involvement in the decision-making.

“There’s extensive documentary evidence the archdiocese was aware by the 1980s at the latest of numerous reports of serious, devastating sex crimes allegedly committed by Ray against children,” Thronson said. “Given that Ray was removed from active ministry in the early 1990s over allegations of severe abuse, it would be surprising if Augustinian leadership was not aware of his history.”

The Archdiocese of Chicago settled the case in 2022, a little over a year after it was filed, Thronson said.

The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Prevost served as a parish pastor and diocesan official in Peru. He returned there in 2015, when Pope Francis appointed him as Bishop of the diocese of Chiclayo, in northwestern Peru. In April 2022, three women filed a complaint to Prevost accusing two priests there of sexual abuse beginning in 2007, when they were minors, as reported by The Pillar, a Catholic investigative journalism project.

In December 2022, the women filed civil complaints, saying the diocese had failed to act or inform civil authorities about their allegations. But prosecutors closed the case a month later, saying the statute of limitations had expired, according to SNAP’s complaint.

The diocese denied the women’s allegations, saying that Prevost met with them personally when they filed their initial complaint. The diocese said it suspended one priest after the complaint, and that the other was no longer in ministry because of his age and poor health. It also said it forwarded their complaint to higher-ups in Rome, to an office known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. But the dicastery closed that case in August 2023, after the diocese notified it of the dismissal of the civil case.

SNAP’s March 25 complaint alleges that Prevost, as bishop, failed to open an investigation, properly inform civil prosecutors, or restrict the priests involved.

The women also said church investigators never talked to them, SNAP’s Pearson told CNN. “The fact they say they weren’t even interviewed is extremely concerning to us.”

Prevost’s successor as Bishop of Chiclayo, Guillermo Cornejo, reopened the case in December 2023 and called for a new investigation, after one of the three women went public with her accusations, as first reported by The Pillar last year.

While he served as Bishop of Chiclayo, Prevost told the Peruvian national newspaper La Republica in 2019 that, “We reject cover-ups and secrecy” about sexual abuse cases. “They cause a lot of harm, because we have to help people who have suffered due to wrongdoing.”

He urged people to come forward if they’re aware of abuse against minors by a priest. “On behalf of the Church, we want to tell people that if there has been any offense; if they have suffered or are victims of the wrongdoing of a priest, they should come and report it, so we can act for the good of the Church, the person, and the community.”

Rodolfo Soriano Nuñez, a sociologist in Mexico City who has written extensively about the Roman Catholic church and its handling of clerical sexual abuse, said that, for any failings, Prevost was one of the few bishops in Peru who tried seriously to address sexual abuse by priests, setting up a commission to deal with such cases.

“I think Prevost was the best bishop in Peru when dealing with abuse cases in his diocese. And there were plenty of cases,” said Soriano-Nuñez. “He dealt with the issue as far as he was able to deal with it.” Unlike some of his counterparts elsewhere in Peru and the rest of Latin America, he said, Prevost was not “going after the victims, or gaslighting the victims or playing the fool.”

More broadly, Soriano-Nuñez said he finds it encouraging that the new Pope Leo XIV was not a prince of the church. For most of his career, “He wasn’t in Rome, or in Paris. He was a poor Augustinian priest in Peru. He was working with peasants, learning Quechua. Learning Spanish is easy for English speakers. But learning Quechua, that takes time.”

Pearson said SNAP has not heard back from the Vatican about its complaint. “Knowing that Prevost is now Leo XIV, we’re concerned whether this will ever be investigated.” She added, “We’re calling for a zero-tolerance law, to permanently remove from the ministry anyone found to have abused children… and there has to be independent oversight and a means through which they can be held accountable.”

She said SNAP is calling on the new pope to “apologize for his shortcomings and put these investigations in the hands of people who are not part of the Vatican. If he doesn’t do that, he won’t have the credibility survivors need him to have, if this cycle of abuse in the Catholic Church is ever to end.”

By Bob Ortega and Robert Kuznia, CNN