Survivor of clergy sex abuse in Peru visits pope’s hometown to call for more reforms

Chicago – A Peruvian survivor of the sexual abuse of the clergy brought her public campaign for reforms in the American hometown of Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, saying that he had failed to investigate his case when he was bishop in his country of origin and must now intervene as the chief of world Catholics.

“I have been calm since the Pope was elected,” said Ana María Quispe Díaz in Spanish at a press conference in downtown Chicago. “But I do not plan to be silent forever.”

She appeared with members of the survivor network of people abused by priests. The advocacy group sent a letter to the Pope Thursday renewing the requests for more empowerment on the complaints of the sexual abuse of the clergy and published documents related to the case of Díaz.

The Associated Press does not name people who say that they have been sexually assaulted unless they consented to be identified or decide to tell their stories publicly, as Díaz did. She began to express himself on social networks in 2023 and faced threats and harassment in Peru because of this, Snap officials said.

Before the May elections of Leo, Snap filed an official complaint against Robert Prévost at the time, with the Secretary of State of the Vatican, alleging that he had abused the ecclesiastical power in his treatment of two cases.

Díaz said that she was a victim in one of these cases that overlapped with PREVOST’s mandate as a bishop of Chiclayo, Peru. According to the complaint filed in March by Snap, the Diocese of Prevost did not fully investigate in April 2022 when three women accused the priests Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles and Ricardo Yesquen of abusing them sexually as minors.

Díaz said Thursday that she had spoken briefly with Prevost on the phone in 2020, telling her how she had been mistreated by Vásquez Gonzáles, but it was not given that many could be done. The three women spoke with Prevost in person in 2022 about both priests, according to Díaz.

“How much damage can he do now that he is the Pope?” She asked, speaking through a translator.

But Prevost did everything he was supposed to do, according to the diocese of Chiclayo and the Vatican, including the restriction of the priest’s ministry, sending a preliminary investigation to the Vatican sexual crimes office, offering psychological help to the victims and suggesting that they go to the authorities, who archived the case because it happened too long ago.

Pope Francis had a mixed record on the response to the crisis of sexual abuse of the clergy, broke a major case in Chile in 2018 before overthrowing the course, commanding an investigation and apologizing to the victims. In the end, he became a turning point for the way he ordered the church to manage the cases of priests sexually abusing children for the rest of his papacy.

In these cases, the Vatican investigation noted that Prevost acted properly in the imposition of preliminary restrictions in Vásquez Gonzáles while the Peruvian authorities led their own civil investigation. The Vatican office archived the case for lack of evidence, then reopened in 2023 after gaining ground in the media.

The groups of victims require leo accounts. Meanwhile, his supporters say that the Chiclayo affair is exploited by his opponents to undermine him after having made enemies by helping to close the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a secular Catholic community with scandal mud in Peru.

No one accused Leo of mistreating himself, nor knowingly keeping attackers in the public prosecutor, which was the biggest problem recently affecting the Catholic Church.

Snap asked that the accused priests be removed, which Díaz also looked for.

The organization provided copies of letters sent in July between officials of the Peruvian church and Díaz. In them, officials of the Peruvian Church say that Vásquez Gonzáles asked earlier this year “to be exempt from the obligations arising from his ordination as a priest and to leave the state of office”.

The process would take at least six months, depending on the letters. Díaz said it was too long.

Fidel Purisaca, director of communications for the Diocese of Chiclayo, did not confirm neither did not deny the request of Vásquez Gonzáles. “This is a confidential affair between the priest, the Vatican bishop and dicastery,” he told the Associated Press in a WhatsApp message.

The diocese said that Yesquén was too sick to continue his ministry, and no priest was publicly commented on the accusations.

During his stay in Chicago, Díaz did interviews with media in Spanish and for podcasts. She also participated in the annual Snap in Pennsylvania conference last week.

Now aged 29 and mother of two young children, Díaz said that she was still not always ready to talk about it. But she said something had changed when her daughter had 1.

“Everything came back to me on abuse,” she said, sometimes wiping tears. “I couldn’t leave her alone. Since then, it was a real fight for me to be able to leave them alone. ”

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The writer Associated Press Nicole Winfield in Rome and Franklin Briceño in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.