Peruvian abuse victim: lawyer manipulated victims to accuse Pope
September 29, 2025
» Continue to this story on National Catholic Reporter
CWN Editor's Note: A Peruvian woman, whose sex-abuse complaint led to accusations of a cover-up by Pope Leo XIV, has said that the canon lawyer representing her exploited the case for his own purposes.
Ana Maria Quispe Diaz is one of three sisters who reported abuse in the Chiclayo diocese, and questioned whether then-Bishop Prevost had handled the complaints promptly. She has now told the National Catholic Reporter that an aggressive canon lawyer, Ricardo Coronado-Arrascue, sought international attention by claiming that the future Pontiff had engaged in a cover-up.
Quispe believes that Coronado-Arrascue, a defrocked priest with a checkered record of his own, used her case to advance his own agenda. . “He didn’t really want to help us; we concluded that,” she told National Catholic Reporter. “He ended up helping us, yes, but not because he wanted to help us.”
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