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.
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, Peru. In 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.
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 2023.
SNAP’s 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.
Prevost’s successor as Bishop of Chiclayo, Guillermo Cornejo, reopened the case in 2023 and called for a new investigation, after one of the three women went public with her accusations, as reported by The Pillar.
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 Prevost was one of the few bishops in Peru who tried to address sexual abuse by priests, setting up a commission to deal with such cases.
While he served as Bishop of Chiclayo, Prevost told newspaper La Republica in 2019 that, “We reject cover-ups and secrecy” about sexual abuse cases. He urged people to come forward if they’re aware of abuse against minors by a priest.
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