Exclusive: Pope Leo critic now says her lawyer might have had a secret agenda

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 the 1990s 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 becoming a 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 a papal decree that was published April 15, 2025.

In Peru, close observers and former associates say that's why Coronado-Arrascue has a grudge against Leo.

In an interview, 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 cover-up. SNAP's report accused then-Cardinal Prevost of mishandling clergy abuse cases in Peru and Chicago.

SNAP has launched a well-funded 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 because there is no universal canon law that prevents known abusers from continuing to minister to children and vulnerable people.

"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 call with Prevost and 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 Coronado-Arrascue 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. Canon law states that the accuser and the accused alike "can freely appoint an advocate and procurator" for a canonical trial. Yet there is nothing in canon law that states that either party must be appointed a canon lawyer from the moment a claim is brought to a bishop in the pre-trial phase.

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. "I 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."

"My claim is that the canonical process against me is a charade to exclude me from the right defense to the victims," he said.

Quispe said that Coronado-Arrascue 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, some four months after he began representing the sisters, 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 Coronado-Arrascue 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 Coronado-Arrascue 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, Quispe told NCR.

Coronado-Arrascue asked "that we do something more for our case, that it be more public," she said.

Quispe said the reason Coronado-Arrascue gave was to inoculate himself from the ongoing, yearslong investigation into his own case, which he told the sisters was politically motivated.

"He said to do this report because they wanted to remove him from the priesthood," she said.

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." Data from 2025 listed "Cuarto Poder" as the 10th most-viewed TV program in Peru; América Televisión, the program's parent network that publishes its episodes online, has more than 8 million YouTube subscribers.

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 star 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.

"They do not even recognize the lawyer that they need; if the lawyer they have is rejected for some reason, then give them a lawyer," she said, speaking to the camera.

Following Prevost's election to the papacy, Carreño 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 and is still viewable online.

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, which has a track record of successfully getting its message out to the U.S. media.

"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 célèbre at one point."

"None of that, in my opinion, has helped the victims," the pope said. "It has not helped the church, but unfortunately that has been the case."

Banned by church authorities from practicing canon law, Coronado-Arrascue said he is no longer involved in the sisters' case.

"As a matter of fact, [the sisters] haven't talked to me since the bishops' conference in Peru canceled me," Coronado-Arrascue said.

Whistleblower says Leo smear is revenge

Nine months since he was defrocked, Coronado-Arrascue is living in Lima with his elderly mother. He says he is spending his free time in part 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 in a recent phone interview.

Regarding the Sodalitium, Coronado-Arrascue said he had informal connections with the religious group, adding that he had accepted invitations to attend the group's liturgical ceremonies and to hear members' confessions. He said he was never an official member of the organization.

Yet interviews with former members reveal the depth of Coronado-Arrascue's ties to the Sodalitium.

In the 1980s, years before he was ordained a priest in 1990, Coronado-Arrascue studied philosophy with Sodalitium members in Peru.

"I met him when I was a Sodalit [a member of the Sodalitium], and we studied in the same class at the Faculty of Philosophy in Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo, from 1983 to 1985. He wasn't a priest yet," said Pedro Salinas, a former member of the Sodalitium who co-wrote a book on wrongdoing in the organization.

Renzo Orbegozo Benvenuto, another former member of the Sodalitium, said that he met Coronado-Arrascue in the mid-1990s when he began attending theology classes in Peru. At the time, Coronado-Arrascue was a formator with the Augustinians.

"Later, when I lived in the Sodalitium's formation house, we once went to play soccer against the Augustinians at his formation house," said Benvenuto, who was a Sodalit for 19 years until he left the community in 2008.

A former seminarian under Coronado-Arrascue, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Coronado-Arrascue would often take seminarians to talks given by Luis Fernando Figari, the Sodalitium's founder. Coronado-Arrascue presented Figari as a model to the priests in formation. In an internal investigation published in 2017, Figari was found responsible for the sexual abuse of minors and adults and was later expelled from the movement in 2024.

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. 

"These connections are personal friendships with Sodalits, former Sodalits, or members linked to the Sodalit family," Benvenuto said.

Asked about his connections to the Sodalitium, Coronado-Arrascue said that he was never an official member of the community. When he left Peru in 1999, he said, he lost contact with the group for several years. He added that he helped some members leave the movement.

"I have never participated in their spiritual formation classes," Coronado-Arrascue said. "This effort to involve me with the Sodalitum, I don't know what the end game is for that."

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 eight years before the age limit called for in canon law, was also 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.

"This smear campaign was launched by the [Sodalitium] in revenge for the Eguren incident. It had no basis in fact, except that the victims existed and the priests were predators, but Prevost, from what is known and documented, acted, not covered up," Salinas said.

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 and naked seminarians

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 strong-arming 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."

"I have never abused anybody sexually," he said. "I have never touched anybody sexually in any abusive way."

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. 

Future pope sent abuse reports to Vatican

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.

"I think one of the things that helps Prevost is that he sent the documents in July 2022 to the DDF," Peruvian journalist Paola Ugaz, who has written extensively about abuses within the Sodalitium, told NCR.

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.

"Why don't they publish the results of the investigation?" Coronado-Arrascue said.

"Do you expect that Rome is going to tell you that [Leo] did something wrong? Do you expect the Diocese of Chiclayo will say he did something wrong? I think you have to be naive to believe that," Coronado-Arrascue added.

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.

"I thought it was my responsibility to do so," Coronado-Arrascue said.

Coronado-Arrascue contacted SNAP, the U.S.-based advocacy group for clergy sex abuse survivors, 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. SNAP spokesperson Pearson told NCR that the organization has focused on the victim's direct testimonies, the facts of the case, and Prevost's compliance with Vatican policies regarding the management of abuse cases.

"Coronado's motivations for representing the victims for several months in 2024 don't change Prevost's course of action when Ana María Quispe Díaz first reported abuse by Fr. Ricardo Yesquén to Prevost by phone in 2020 and when she later reported abuse by Fr. Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles to Prevost in person alongside the other victims in April 2022," Pearson said.

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."