Survivors of clergy abuse are calling for an investigation into Pope Leo XIV during his tenure as bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, alleging he played a role in covering up how priests and clerics accused of sexual assault were allowed to continue their roles in the Catholic Church.
Recordings of a meeting from this past April between the Rev. Giampiero Gambaro with Ana María Quispe Díaz and others accusing Peruvian clerics of assault revealed the man they accused had confessed to church officials years ago, and in September was granted an “honorable discharge.” The Chicago Sun-Times reviewed a translated version of the recordings made public by Conclave Watch.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests plans to file an updated vos estis lux mundi complaint, the church’s pathway for documenting accusations of abuse or mishandling of cases, in light of the newly surfaced recordings. The group said these cases were representative of “a system that allows bishops and cardinals to control and close cases that implicate themselves.”
“We cannot have another pope in this institutional system who has covered up child sex crimes,” said Robert Isely, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse from Wisconsin and SNAP founder, at a Thursday news conference in Chicago. “I’ve been at this 35 years, and the only way things change is when there are consequences and accountability. … We don’t want this to happen to another child.”
Vatican officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Díaz, of Chiclayo, Peru, alleges she was abused by a priest when she was 9 years old, and her two sisters were assaulted by the same priest. In April 2022, she said, the three of them brought their allegations to Pope Leo XIV, then known as Robert Prevost and serving as bishop of Chiclayo, though he never opened an investigation.
The Vatican ended its investigation into the alleged abuse in 2023 after civil authorities said the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations, according to The New York Times. The Vatican told the paper that Prevost had done more than was required in at least one of the cases.
The new evidence shows that church officials admitted the Rev. Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles, known as Father Lute, had confessed to removing his clothes, making sexually inappropriate comments and touching himself and the victims, according to SNAP.
Gambaro said Prevost’s “preliminary investigation was very poorly conducted” — describing it as a “joke” — and that “the church’s statute of limitations is clearly quite different.” He added that an unknown church official, believed by the victims to be Prevost, “signed a letter saying the [canonical] process should not be carried out.”
“This is the first time I’ve dealt with this type of situation where they invoke the statute of limitations under civil law in this way,” Gambaro says in the recording.
Lute and the Rev. Ricardo Yesquén Paiva, who Díaz says also assaulted her as a child, continued to be shown in Facebook photos serving in church roles despite Prevost’s claims they had been removed, according SNAP’s analysis of social media.
One Facebook photo shows Prevost standing with Paiva at his birthday party in 2023 — three years after the allegations surfaced — with both dressed in clerical garb.
By 2024, the church said the accused cleric who had been pictured with Prevost couldn’t be investigated and had already exited ministry due to a neurological condition, according to SNAP.
“It is incomprehensible that instead of seeking the truth and repairing the victims, the decision was made to close the case through a papal grace that frees the abuser from facing the responsibility that corresponds to him, leaving us in a vulnerable situation with no reparation, where the only thing offered to us is payment for therapy,” Diáz said in a statement.
Contributing: Kaitlin Washburn