Cardinal Cipriani now says he did sign precept imposing restrictions

In a reversal of prior claims, Cardinal Cipriani has said he did sign a written set of restrictions on his ministry

In a reversal of prior claims, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne issued a statement Wednesday confirming he did sign a written set of restrictions on his ministry imposed against him by the Vatican over allegations of sexual abuse, walking back a previous statement to the contrary.

Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne. Image via Vatican media

Despite other claims last week, the cardinal said Jan. 29 that he did receive — and sign — written notice of a penal precept which imposed formal restrictions on his public ministry and living arrangements in 2019, shortly after his resignation was accepted at the age of 75.

The precept was imposed by the Vatican following accusations in Peru of sexual abuse against the cardinal dating back to the early 1980s, first made in 2018. Cipriani served as Archbishop of Lima from 1999 until 2019.

When news of both the accusations and the Vatican imposed restrictions on his ministry first broke last week, the cardinal denied any suggestion he had ever committed acts of abuse, and said that he had still not been given an account of exactly what he is alleged to have done.

He maintains both his innocence and his ignorance of the accusations.

But Cipriana seemed Wednesday to change his story on another key part of the narrative.

In a Jan. 25 statement, Cipriani, now 81, denied that he had ever been given written notice of a precept against him by the Vatican, and said that he never signed an acknowledgment of such an act.

The cardinal claimed instead that he had been verbally informed of some restrictions, which he had abided by, before Francis subsequently lifted them, again verbally to the cardinal, in a 2020 meeting.

That narrative was contradicted by the Vatican’s press office, which asserted that Cipriani had been handed in 2019 a written precept, which he had signed, outlining various personal and ministerial restrictions which had never been lifted, though it acknowledged that “specific permissions have been granted on certain occasions to accommodate requests related to the cardinal’s age and family circumstances.”

On Jan. 29, in a second statement issued to the Peruvian bishops’ conference, Cipriani gave a different account of things — acknowledging that he had been given written restrictions, and had signed for them.

Reiterating his “surprise and pain at the injustice with which [the conference leadership] take for granted unproven facts about me,” Cipriani said he is “obliged to point out that when the nuncio in Peru transmitted to me the precept with which [Vatican] limited certain faculties of mine, I signed it, declaring in writing at the same time that the accusation was absolutely false and that I would obey these dispositions - as I have done - out of love for the Church and out of communion with the Roman Pontiff.”

“I have accepted some preventive measures in response to the accusation I received until the truth was clarified, even though they have their origin in a false accusation, against which I have not been able to defend myself,” the cardinal said Wednesday.

The cardinal has not retracted his claim that after a Feb. 4, 2020, private audience, Pope Francis permitted him to resume pastoral activities.

The audience was not recorded on the Vatican’s daily bulletin that day.

The Vatican has officially maintained that disciplinary measures remain in force, with the caveat that “specific permissions have been granted on certain occasions.”

While Cipriani has now publicly accepted the Vatican’s account of written restrictions which he signed, there has been no clarification from either side about the details of the restrictions — with the Vatican saying only that they concerned his public activities, place of residence, and the use of episcopal insignia. The cardinal has not walked back his claim that Pope Francis privately and verbally lifted them in an unrecorded meeting in 2020.

The cardinal is not known to have limited his use of episcopal insignia since his retirement from Peru and, in his own words, has engaged in “extensive pastoral activity” in the years after his supposed 2020 papal audience, which has included “preaching spiritual retreats, administering sacraments, etc.”

Since his resignation and relocation to Spain, cardinal has been especially active with Opus Dei, which he first joined in 1962 and for which he was ordained as a priest in 1977.

In addition to his active ministerial life in Spain, which included publicly celebrating Mass, Cipriani also continued to serve until 2020 as a papally-appointed member of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, a body which has ultimate oversight of the Holy See’s financial affairs.

Cipriani’s case is the latest in a series of international scandals involving accusations against senior clerics and limited sanctions imposed by the Holy See.

In the wake of the 2018 scandal surrounding former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, it emerged that the Apostolic nuncio to the United States had issued similar preceptive restrictions on the retired former Archbishop of Washington, with similar claims being made that Pope Francis had then informally lifted them.

In 2022, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, a former president of the French bishops’ conference, admitted to behaving “in a reprehensible way” toward a minor girl when he was a pastor in the Archdiocese of Marseille in the late 1980s.

Richard was at the time a member of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees cases of clerical abuse of minors, as well as serving on the Dicasteries for Divine Worship and for Christian Unity, in all of which he continued to serve for several months, despite the Vatican reportedly imposing a ban on his public ministry.

Despite admitting to abusing a minor, Richard remains a cardinal and was eligible to vote in a future conclave until he turned 80 in 2024.

Ricard’s admission came shortly after it emerged that another French Bishop Michel Santier had resigned in 2021 following accusations of spiritual abuse while implying publicly that he was stepping down for health reasons.

Earlier this month the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez gave an update on the canonical process against internationally renowned religious artist Fr. Marco Rupnik, who is accused of sexual and spiritually abusing dozens of religious sisters over decades.

The current process against Rupnik was only allowed to begin when Pope Francis waived the canonical statute of limitations covering several of his alleged crimes in the face of public outcry.

Following an earlier penal process opened by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2019, however, Rupnik was excommunicated in a secret decision, without the penalty being publicly declared, allowing the priest to continue in public ministry and to serve as a senior consultor to Vatican dicasteries.