Survivor holds cautious hope amid claims new Pope mishandled clergy abuse allegations

ST. JOHN’S — An advocate for victims of clergy abuse said Saturday they are holding on to cautious hope about Pope Leo XIV, but keeping a close eye on recently surfaced allegations that he previously sheltered those accused of abuse.

Newfoundlander Gemma Hickey, the board president of Ending Clergy Abuse, was in Rome this week to push for the church to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for clergy abuse. They said Saturday that survivors have mixed reviews about Leo, which is the name taken by Cardinal Robert Prevost upon his election Thursday.

“It’s only been two days now to his papacy,” Hickey said in an interview. “I am being cautiously optimistic based on what I have heard.”

The bottom line, however, is that the church must change, they added.

“You can’t be married and be a priest,” Hickey said. “But you can be a child rapist and be a priest. There’s something wrong with that picture.”

Just weeks before Prevost became the first American to be elected Pope, a Chicago-based group filed complaints about him with Vatican officials, claiming he fell short in his responses to allegations of abuse in Chicago and Peru.

In a March 25 letter to the Vatican secretary of state, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests allege Prevost failed to investigate after three women came forward in 2022 to say they were abused by two priests in Peru when they were minors. The letter says Prevost, then the Bishop of Chiclayo, a coastal city in northern Peru, did not ask the women for testimony, nor did he notify authorities or remove the priests.

The letter also claims Prevost didn’t alert authorities at a Chicago elementary school when a priest forbidden to be alone with minors because he was accused of sexual abuse was residing at a nearby Augustinian friary in the early 2000s.

The letter said Prevost, who was a regional leader of the Order of St. Augustine at the time, gave the approval for James Ray, then a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago, to live at the friary “half a city block away from the school,” despite knowing Ray was not allowed to be around children.

“In our opinion, this conduct of Cardinal Prevost stands as an abuse of ecclesiastical power, office, or function that has harmed the vulnerable and caused scandal,” the letter reads.

But some advocates, including Pedro Salinas, a founding member of Ending Clergy Abuse, credit Prevost with supporting survivors of an abusive, Peru-based Catholic movement that was eventually dissolved by the late Pope Francis.

“As Bishop of Chiclayo, Robert Prevost played a decisive role in confronting the Sodalicio case — one of the most egregious abuse scandals in Latin America,” Salinas, a journalist, said in a press release Friday. “He stood with us when others didn’t. That’s why his election matters.”

The release says Leo faces a critical choice: “Preserve a broken system or lead the Church into a future grounded in accountability and survivor-led reform.”

Hickey said Ending Clergy Abuse is seeking a meeting with Leo, the sooner the better. The group wants Leo to impose a “one strike, you’re out” policy across the globe. Such a policy already exists in the United States, Hickey said.

“It’s a matter of public safety, because there are still predators at altars all over the world,” they said, adding clergy accused of abuse are currently allowed to keep their jobs or be shuffled to a new place where they can continue their abuse.

They have been in Rome for more than a week, lobbying cardinals, meeting with theologians and delivering a 95-point manifesto by survivors of clergy abuse to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Palace of the Holy Office.

“I would hope that this pope is courageous enough to lead, because people are starved for that right now,” they said.

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2025.

Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press