Lima (AFP) – Activists against sexual assaults in the Catholic Church urged Pope Leo
First modification: 06/11/2026 - 17:47
The exhortation arose during a press conference, in which Bishop Accountability, an American non-profit organization, presented a list of 77 religious "who have been publicly accused of sexually abusing minors" in Peru.
The 71-year-old Supreme Pontiff will begin on Friday one of the most ambitious papal tours in recent decades, which will take him to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, his adopted homeland. The Vatican announced that on its trip it would meet with victims of abuse, without specifying where these meetings would take place.
"What the pope can do at this moment to put an end to or at least greatly improve this unfortunate situation is to implement a decree (...) of zero tolerance for those found guilty of sexual abuse," Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the organization, told the press.
"That they be permanently removed from the church," as well as the "people who are found covering up these acts," he added.
The request was supported by José Escardó, president of the Network of Survivors of Abuse in Peru, who highlighted that this measure "is something that is needed."
"These people must be placed in the hands of civil justice and should not be judged only by the church," he stressed.
Escardó, 56, is one of the victims of the ultra-conservative group Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, whose closure Pope Francis ordered in 2025 after a seven-year investigation carried out by the Vatican.
In Bishop Accountability's list of alleged abusers, which compiles a majority of already known cases, three bishops appear, among them the ultra-conservative Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani.
According to Barrett, the database is based on journalistic and judicial information available on the Internet.
The activist asked the pope to order the bishops of Peru to publish the names of the "accused" people as a "measure for the prevention of child abuse and to help victims heal."
© 2026 AFP
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