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[...]the canon lawyer, Ricardo Coronado-Arrascue, now a defrocked priest, has his own trail of problems and an apparent conflict of interest that raises questions about his motives in promoting the allegations against the pope. Prevost played a key role in dismantling the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae - a scandal-plagued but influential Catholic movement of laypeople and priests with which Coronado-Arrascue has deep ties, according to NCR's investigation. The Sodalitium's top leaders were expelled and the organization shut down by an April 15, 2025 papal decree. Since the sisters cut contact with Coronado-Arrascue in September 2024, the case has been picked up by the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, which has published exchanges between the sisters and counter-replies from the Chiclayo Diocese. SNAP has launched a wellfunded campaign to criticize the new pope, which included spending thousands of dollars to publicize its allegations, maintaining a delegation and presence in Rome during the conclave that elected Leo, and organizing and financing visa arrangements and travel for Quispe from Peru to Chicago, Leo's hometown.
- Vatican News
Exclusive: Pope Leo XIV critic now says her lawyer might have had a secret agenda
LIMA, PERU - A year ago, the future Pope Leo XIV's reputation came under sudden and unanticipated attack.
Three biological sisters in Peru alleged abuse at the hands of two Catholic priests in then-Bishop Robert Prevost's Chiclayo Diocese. Years after reporting the abuse, they retained a new canon lawyer, previously unknown to the sisters, who amplified their complaints by arranging for national media coverage. The young women began alleging that Prevost mishandled their claims, covered up the allegations, and failed to punish the priests they accused of sexually abusing them as minors.
The allegations continue to dog the new pope.
But the canon lawyer, Ricardo Coronado-Arrascue, now a defrocked priest, has his own trail of problems and an apparent conflict of interest that raises questions about his motives in promoting the allegations against the pope.
In an exclusive interview in Peru with the National Catholic Reporter, one of the sisters, Ana Maria Quispe Diaz, said she initially had no complaints with Prevost and was pleased with her meeting with the future pope.
While Quispe had aired some complaints about Prevost on social media, it wasn't until Coronado-Arrascue volunteered to represent the sisters for free that they began to accuse Prevost of a coverup, turning it into a national cause célèbre.
In retrospect, Quispe said she and her sisters suspect they were taken advantage of primarily to counter Coronado-Arrascue's own legal troubles. "He didn't really want to help us; we concluded that," she told NCR. "He ended up helping us, yes, but not because he wanted to help us."
In an interview for a biography released Sept. 18 in Peru, the new pontiff made his first comments on the matter since he ascended to the papacy May 8, 2025.
"There has been a lot of manipulation of the case," Leo said. The sisters "have been victimized and revictimized," the pope said in a July interview for the book, Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the XXI Century.
Coronado-Arrascue has been trailed for years by controversy and accusations of sexual wrongdoing that ultimately got him defrocked and had his status as a canon lawyer revoked. The allegations date back to the1990s and to his tenure as a priest in the Augustinian order, a monthslong NCR investigation has found.
Coronado-Arrascue has long harbored animosity for other, non-Peruvian Augustinian friars ministering in Peru, according to a source formerly close to Coronado-Arrascue who was granted anonymity over concern for legal retaliation. Among the foreign Augustinians was Prevost, who first arrived in Peru as a missionary in 1985 and served there for about two decades before becominga cardinal.
Coronado -Arrascue had crossed paths with Prevost before he became pope.
Prevost played a key role in dismantling the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae - a scandal-plagued but influential Catholic movement of laypeople and priests with which Coronado-Arrascue has deep ties, according to NCR's investigation.
As a bishop in Peru, Prevost met with victims of the Sodalitium and sought justice on their behalf. As a cardinal and head of the Vatican's Dicastery for Bishops, he arranged a meeting between Pope Francis and investigative journalists digging into the Sodalitium's abuses, prompting Francis to launch an investigation into the movement in Peru. The Sodalitium's top leaders were expelled and the organization shut down by an April 15, 2025 papal decree.
In Peru, close observers and former associates say that's why Coronado-Arrascue has a grudge against Leo.
Coronado-Arrascue said the grudge assertion is "ridiculous."
He also denied accusations of sexual wrongdoing, including the allegations that led to his being defrocked as a Catholic priest.
Since the sisters cut contact with Coronado-Arrascue in September 2024, the case has been picked up by the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, which has published exchanges between the sisters and counter-replies from the Chiclayo Diocese. In March 2025, SNAP filed a report under Vos Estis Lux Mundi, Francis' 2019 document establishing norms regarding accusations of abuse and coverup. SNAP's report accused thenCardinal Prevost of mishandling clergy abuse cases in Peru and Chicago.
SNAP has launched a wellfunded campaign to criticize the new pope, which included spending thousands of dollars to publicize its allegations, maintaining a delegation and presence in Rome during the conclave that elected Leo, and organizing and financing visa arrangements and travel for Quispe from Peru to Chicago, Leo's hometown.
Sarah Pearson, a spokesperson for SNAP, told NCR that the organization supports a zero tolerance statute in the Catholic Church.
"When we see testimony and evidence that suggests a failure on the part of a high-ranking cardinal with oversight of abuse cases to meet the standards put forward in Vos Estis Lux Mundi, a policy we see as deeply lacking in its ability to provide justice and accountability to victims for abuse and cover-up and prevent future sexual violence, we are particularly alarmed," Pearson said.
However, the involvement of Coronado-Arrascue in advancing the allegations raises questions about the motives behind the criticism of Leo. Coronado-Arrascue's critics in Peru believe he weaponized the sisters' case out of a sense of revenge and deep animosity against Leo.
Coronado-Arrascue dismissed this narrative as "preposterous." He said, "These are all made-up stories."
- The sisters and the future pope
Quispe said a priest leading her parish's youth group, Fr. Ricardo Yesquén, inappropriately touched her and regularly kissed her on the mouth when she was 8-10 years old. Two years later, Quispe said, another priest whom her family had grown close to, Fr. Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles, shared a bed with her and groped her during an overnight trip to a rural parish in northern Peru.
In early 2020, she contacted Prevost to report Yesquén through a priest in the diocese who was a family friend. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they spoke over the phone, and Prevost "asked for forgiveness on behalf of the church. He encouraged me to file a civil complaint, and said that he would go with me to file the complaint if needed," Quispe told NCR.
In April 2022, determined to file the civil complaint, she told her sisters about the abuse she suffered by Yesquén. To her surprise, they shared that they both had been abused by Vásquez, including one instance of coerced masturbation.
Quispe again contacted the priest who had arranged her original callwith Prevostand that same week the sisters - then 24, 26 and 31 - met with Prevost at the bishop's office. She recalled the meeting as overwhelmingly positive.
In an August interview in Lima, Quispe told NCR that it wasn't until Coronado-Arrascue began representing the sisters more than two years later that they began to feel that Prevost had mishandled their case.
"In that moment when Prevost talked to us, it was like 'Wow, he's listening to us,' " she told NCR. Quispe said it was in a meeting with CoronadoArrascue in July 2024 that her opinion of Prevost's handling of the case changed.
Coronado-Arrascue had told Quispe then that Prevost mishandled their case by failing to appoint them with a canon lawyer from the moment they met with him to present their allegations.
Vatican guidelines for handling allegations of abuse do not mandate that a bishop must appoint a canon lawyer to a person who brings claims of abuse to them. In TikToks published more than a year after their meeting, Quispe criticized the diocese for taking inadequate action against a priest she had accused of abuse, and said that Prevost knew the truth of the accusations.
In the recently published interview, Leo offered a different version of events.
"I tried to explain to them what I do with all victims in terms of their rights, in terms of a certain empathy and listening to them," the pope said in the interview. "T told them from the beginning that I believed them, and I offered them different types of support, including psychological and legal support."
Coronado -Arrascue told Quispe how "Prevost did some things to support sexual abuse, all sorts of things," she said. "He was opening my eyes, and at that moment I started crying."
From then on, Prevost became a target in the sisters' allegations in pursuit of justice.
At the same time he met with Quispe, Coronado -Arrascue was being investigated for what is known as an offense against the Sixth Commandment - in other words, a sexual sin - in a case that ultimately resulted in his dismissal from the clerical state, according to a letter from the Cajamarca Diocese and acknowledged by Coronado-Arrascue in an interview with NCR.
Coronado -Arrascue said in the interview with NCR that he was being investigated for sexual misconduct in Lima, an accusation he vehemently denied. He said church officials railroaded him and withheld key evidentiary documents from him. He described the church's canonical procedures as a "sham."
Quispe said that CoronadoArrascue told the sisters that the investigation was trumped up because church officials "were starting to attack him because of our case," Quispe told NCR.
In August 2024, the Peruvian bishops' conference prohibited Coronado-Arracue from practicing canon law because of the then-active investigation. Prevost led that investigation into Coronado-Arrascue's alleged offense during the future pope's tenure as head of the Peruvian bishops' commission for listening to abuse victims, a source directly involved with the investigation told NCR.
Prevost had reached out to Augustinians who had known CoronadoArrascue during his time as a formator at the order's formation house in Lima, and their statements were included in a report submitted to the Vatican's Dicastery for Clergy.
It was while that investigation was underway that CoronadoArrascue began pressuring the sisters to further promote their allegations in the media, specifically through a TV report with a prominent investigative journalism program in Peru.
Coronado-Arrascue put Quispe and her sisters in contact with the producers of "Cuarto Poder," an investigative journalism TV program in Peru similar to "60 Minutes." The "Cuarto Poder" report, which aired in September 2024, Was a page out of Coronado-Arrascue's narrative. It said that Prevost, "for years, maintained complicit silence in the face of grave accusations of sexual abuse committed in Peru." It also stated that the sisters were denied the right to a canon lawyer, noting that their lawyer at the time, Coronado-Arrascue, had been banned by the Peruvian bishops' conference from practicing canon law.
The program's reporter, Sol Carreño, spoke to the camera during the report to criticize the church for not providing them with legal representation, parroting Coronado-Arrascue's false claim that Prevost should have assigned them a canon lawyer.
Following Prevost's election to the papacy, Carrefio spoke during a "Cuarto Poder" report that aired May 11. She walked back the program's previous report on Prevost, stating that they were not given all of the information from the Chiclayo Diocese on the steps taken in response to the abuse allegations while preparing their report. "Unfortunately, it seems as though some people have taken advantage of these women's plight with their own alternate end," the program said.
The original report has not been redacted.
Though Quispe said that Coronado-Arrascue had his own hidden intentions for representing her and her sisters, she said his involvement and the TV report ultimately helped them by elevating their claims in the media - and gaining the attention of SNAP.
"The news came out in all of the national and international outlets, and that helped, and that would not have happened had it not been for him," Quispe said. "We know that his goal was not to help us, that is clear to us; we know he is wrapped up in stuff."
Leo acknowledged that in Peru the case "became a national cause célébre at one point."
"None of that, in my opinion, has helped the victims," the pope said. "It has not helped the church."
Banned by church authorities from practicing canon law, Coronado-Arrascue said he is no longer involved in the sisters' case.
-Ties to the Sodalitium
Nine months since he was defrocked, Coronado-Arrascue is living in Lima with his elderly mother. He says he is trying to resolve pending litigation he has against some bishops in Peru.
"I'm doing that, and trying to sell some property that I have ignored," Coronado-Arrascue, 61, told NCR. Regarding the Sodalitium, Coronado-Arrascue said he had informal connections with the religious group but said he was never an official member.
Yet interviews with former members reveal the depth of Coronado-Arrascue's ties to the Sodalitium.
Coronado-Arrascue's relationships with Sodalits extended into his 17-year tenure as a diocesan official in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where his mother lived at the time. From 2005 until he resigned his positions in 2022, Coronado-Arrascue served in a variety of roles for the Colorado Springs Diocese, including as a judicial vicar and chancellor.
He socialized in the Sodalitium's community house in Denver. Photos shown to NCR show him in 2023 standing alongside several Sodalitium members.
Coronado -Arrascue's connections to the Sodalitium, along with the timing of the sisters' accusations against Prevost, have led some in Peru to accuse Coronado-Arrascue of engaging in a campaign of retribution against the pope for his stance against the Sodalitium.
Coronado-Arrascue became the sisters" canon lawyer in May 2024, a month after Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Peruvian Archbishop José Antonio Eguren, a member of the Sodalitium.
Eguren, who at 67 resigned as archbishop of Piura was among 10 members who were expelled from the organization in September 2024.
At the time, Prevost was the cardinal leading the Vatican's Dicastery for Bishops, which oversees appointments and resignations of the world's bishops.
The now-disbanded Sodalitium has "the means and contacts to launch a smear campaign" and is "capable of using people without any scruples," according to José Rey de Castro, another former member of the Sodalitium, but that does not mean the entire movement is complicit.
"Let's be fair, not all of the former [Sodalitium] are capable of this, as there are good people who still have dormant consciences and have been part of that institution until its dissolution," Castro said.
- Reports of abuse
Prior to the allegation of sexual misconduct, Coronado -Arrascue Was adamant that he had never previously been formally accused of wrongdoing in any church setting, and that he had never received any letters of reprimand.
"I had never had a canonical process opened against me," Arrascue said. "I never before had a warning from my superiors."
However, documents reviewed by NCR and not previously reported show that members of the Augustinian order directly requested that Coronado -Arrascue leave and not return to the Augustinian province in Peru on account of his behavior. They show that Coronado-Arrascue, when he was an Augustinian priest, Was accused in the late 1990s of engaging in psychologically abusive and sexually inappropriate behavior with seminarians and younger members of his order.
A June 1999 handwritten report, signed by five Augustinian friars, details instances where seminarians were said to be completely naked while in Coronado-Arrascue's room, that he had seminarians swim in the nude, and that he had an "obsession With wanting to see the private parts" of many of them.
"One seminarian, by his own account, had to check in every day by going to Father Ricardo's room to say good night or spend a While chatting with him," says the report, in which Coronado-Arrascue was also accused of "brainwashing" and strongarming seminarians.
Informed by NCR of the letter, Coronado-Arrascue denied any accusations of sexual improprieties and told NCR that he had never before seen the documents, which he said included "made-up allegations."
Coronado -Arrascue also showed NCR a three-page statement in which he described a "difficult" environment for him personally in the Augustinian province in Peru. He claimed to be "psychologically and mentally harassed" by other friars who he said did not approve of his actions as vocations director in having seminarians look "traditional" and wearing habits.
"There was no meeting, assembly or chapter where I was not viciously attacked," Coronado-Arrascue said.
Expelled by Augustinian superiors from his seminary position in 1999, Coronado -Arrascue said he left Peru and stayed with family in the United States for a few months before traveling to Mexico to study canon law.
Coronado-Arrascue said he left the Augustinians in 2001 because the order no longer suited his spiritual life. He added that Prevost, who at the time was the Augustinians' prior general, the worldwide head of the order, approved his request to leave the order.
- 'Justice is too slow'
As for the sisters' case, church officials in Peru have insisted that Prevost handled the matter according to church guidelines.
In two press releases, the Chiclayo Diocese insisted that Prevost commissioned a preliminary investigation, and that he submitted the resulting dossier to the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) on July 21, 2022. In April 2023, the diocese said, Prevost submitted further documentation to the dicastery that consisted of the local prosecutor's finding that the case lacked corroborating evidence and exceeded the statute of limitations.
The diocese declined repeated requests from NCR to release the documents.
Coronado-Arrascue said there is no evidence that the diocese ever conducted a preliminary investigation. He referenced a letter he received from the diocese in June 2023 that said the preliminary investigation had been a "pastoral" rather than a penal matter.
Coronado-Arrascue said a third party, whom he declined to identify, reached out to him on the sisters' behalf before he began representing them. He said he decided to take their case after talking it over with friends. He added that he was never paid for his representation.
He contacted SNAP out of his concern that the sisters would never obtain a fair hearing from church officials.
Since Leo's election, SNAP has held two press conferences in Chicago amplifying the sisters' criticisms that the pope mishandled their case. In the interview for the book, Leo conceded that "justice is too slow" when handling cases of abuse.
"It is an issue that I have already begun to address since my first two months as pope, to begin to examine some of the legal issues involved: Why do these processes take so long? How are the rights of all guaranteed?" he said. "I told them that I believe the victims when they come to talk to me. [But] the [accused] priest claims he is innocent. So the church has to defend the rights of both the victims and the accused, and that is not easy."
The National Catholic Reporter's Rome Bureau is made possible in part by the generosity of Joan and Bob McGrath. NCR's investigative reports, including this story, are made possible in part through the generosity of Annette Lomont.
{Justin McLellan is Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. Brian Fraga is an NCR staff reporter}
Copyright National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company 2025