The once-powerful archbishop of Lima, Peru and the first-ever cardinal of Opus Dei acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican had imposed sanctions on him in 2019 following an allegation of sexual abuse, but he strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 81, penned a letter of response after Spain’s El País newspaper detailed the allegations against him in its latest installment of exposing cases of clergy sexual abuse within the Spanish-speaking Catholic Church. Cipriani called the allegations “completely false.”
“I haven’t committed any crime, nor have I sexually abused anyone in 1983, neither before nor after,” Cipriani said within the letter provided by Opus Dei’s Rome office.
Cipriani, who led the Peruvian church for twenty years before his retirement in 2019, was the primary cardinal of Opus Dei, the conservative movement that was founded by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in 1928, and has greater than 90,000 members in 70 countries. The lay group, which was greatly favored by St. John Paul II, counts priests, celibate laypeople in addition to laymen and ladies with secular jobs and families who strive to “sanctify odd life.”
The allegations against Cipriani add to the upheaval within the Peruvian church following confirmation this week that Pope Francis had decided to dissolve the powerful and influential Peruvian-based movement Sodalitium Christianae Vitae. After years of attempts at reform, Francis decided to suppress the group after a Vatican investigation uncovered sexual abuse by its founder, financial mismanagement by its leaders and spiritual abuse by its top members.
Cipriani was newly in command of the Peruvian church when the primary allegations against Sodalitium aired publicly in a series of articles in 2000 within the magazine Gente by former member José Enrique Escardó.
Cipriani was archbishop when the primary victims presented formal accusations against Sodalitium in 2011 to the church. He insisted that he handled the allegations properly, nevertheless it wasn’t until journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz exposed the practices of Sodalitium of their 2015 book “Half Monks, Half Soldiers” that the case began to maneuver.
Ten years later and 25 years after Escardó first went public with stories of abuse, Escardó met with the pope on Friday. He said they discussed the dissolution of the movement and the necessity to keep victims front and center because the Vatican dismantles the group and tends to its members.
“I feel very, excellent, listened to,” he told The Associated Press on Saturday just outside St. Peter’s Square. “I believe I also let go of a heavy weight, which is the voice of so many victims.”
He attributed the church’s slow response to the Sodalitium scandal, and the attacks that victims endured for speaking out, to the protection Sodalitium enjoyed at the very best echelons of the church in Rome and Lima.
“Cardinal Cipriani was the Opus Dei cardinal that Sodalitium needed,” he said.
In the letter responding to the El País report, Cipriani said that he learned that there had been an allegation made against him in August, 2018, but that he wasn’t given any details.
The cardinal turned 75, the traditional retirement age for bishops, on Dec. 28, 2018, and Francis accepted his resignation a couple of month afterward Jan. 25, 2019.
He said that he next learned on Dec. 18, 2019, that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which processes clergy abuse cases, had imposed “a series of sanctions limiting my priestly ministry and asking that I even have a stable residence outside of Peru.” The cardinal, who lives in Madrid and Rome, said that the Vatican also asked him to stay silent, “which I even have done until now.”
According to the letter, Cipriani met with Francis on Feb. 4, 2020, after which the pope allowed him to resume pastoral work, which Cipriani said had allowed him to evangelise at spiritual retreats and administer sacraments.
He concluded by saying that despite the pain the accusation has caused him, he prayed for his accuser “and for everybody who has suffered abuse by Catholic clergy, but I repeat my complete innocence.”
Opus Dei for its part confirmed that it was aware of the criticism in 2018 and acknowledged that it must have treated the alleged victim higher.
In a press release, the vicar of Opus in Peru, the Rev. Ángel Gómez-Hortigüela, said that the alleged victim had asked to fulfill with him in 2018, but that he declined since the criticism had already been lodged on the Vatican, which has sole jurisdiction to handle accusations against cardinals.
It was an apparent reference to a letter that the alleged victim arranged to have delivered to Francis, detailing his allegations, by the Chilean abuse survivor Juan Carlos Cruz.
“Not having juridical competence within the case, when an individual of the complainant’s confidence asked me to fulfill with him, I reacted considering that such a gathering may not be positive,” the statement from Gómez-Hortigüela said. “Today I realize that I could have offered him a private, human and spiritual welcome, which I do know he received from other people in Opus Dei.”
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