Peruvian bishops: Cipriani has ‘every right to assert innocence’
The local bishops' conference made the concession after the cardinal pushed back on their previous statements
In the latest of a back-and-forth exchange between Peru’s bishops’ and a cardinal accused of abuse, the country’s bishops’ conference said on Monday that Cardinal Juan Cipriani has not been found guilty in a canonical procedure, and that the cardinal has the right to assert his innocence.
The April 7 statement comes after Cipriani accused the Peruvian bishops of lying about him last week, charging that it was a “lie” and a “grave mistake” for the bishops’ conference to say his 2019 resignation as Lima’s archbishop was connected to abuse allegations against him, and asking the conference to rectify its statement.
Cipriani has insisted that allegations which came into the public this year have never been investigated, and that he has never been allowed to defend himself in a canonical process.
In a Jan. 28 letter, the conference had said that “disciplinary measures were imposed” against Cipriani after “verifying the truthfulness of the facts” concerning allegations of sexual abuse against the cardinal.
The conference added that the pope had “accepted the archbishop emeritus of Lima’s resignation of his episcopal ministry after his 75th birthday and imposed some limitations on his ministry.”
But in its letter this week, the conference appeared to backtrack on its past statement, saying that “Cardinal Cipriani has every right to assert his innocence, since guilt is proven in a penal proceeding.”
The bishops’ letter Monday did not directly retract the conference’s past statements, as Cipriani had requested, and stated again that a penal precept had been imposed on him by the Vatican.
“It is no less certain that a penal precept was imposed; for this reason, the exquisite pastoral charity of the Holy Father should not be forgotten.”
The conference’s letter insisted that the precept imposed on and accepted by Cipriani was a proof of the pope “proceeding with justice and mercy.”
“According to the declarations of the Holy See Press Office of January 26, 2025, Cardinal Cipriani received, in the words of its Director Matteo Bruni, ‘disciplinary measures still in force today, regarding his public activity, place of residence and use of insignia,’ which were ‘accepted and signed’ by him,” the letter says.
In his March 28 letter, Cipriani explained he had “waited two months since [his] last letter for a rectification [and] that has not happened” — prompting him to write to the entire national episcopate.
“It’s untrue that anything has been proven, because there has been no trial, nor any evidence has been presented, nor has there been a defense, or witness, or anything,” he added.
Spanish outlet El País reported on Jan. 25 that Cipriani was the subject of a Vatican-imposed penal precept restricting his ministry following accusations in Peru of sexual abuse against the cardinal dating back to the early 1980s, first made in 2018.
Cipriani, ordained a priest in 1977 and a member of Opus Dei, served as Archbishop of Lima from 1999 until 2019.
However, Cipriani still claims that the pope verbally lifted the restrictions on his ministry on a Feb. 4, 2020 private audience that was not recorded on the Vatican’s daily bulletin.
Cipriani has previously said that his freedom to continue in public ministry was obvious, and that he had engaged in “extensive pastoral activity” in the years after his 2020 papal audience, including “preaching spiritual retreats, administering sacraments, etc.”
In his March letter, Cipriani denied that the imposition of the precept meant the allegations against him had been proven.
“The decree issued by the [then] Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith… mentions there is a fumus delicti, meaning there is a possible suspicion [of a crime] that has not been proven, because it had not been subject to a trial that provides me with the due right to defense,” Cipriani wrote.
“As I said before, and I say again, I accepted the restrictions imposed against me reservedly in the precept for the good of the Church, leaving a written record that these accusations against me were false, waiting for the occasion to be able to defend myself, something that has not happened.”
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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.
Ricard was at the time a member of several dicasteries, in all of which he continued to serve for several months, despite the Vatican reportedly imposing a ban on his public ministry.
Ricard remains a cardinal and was eligible to vote in a future conclave until he turned 80 in 2024.
Why do the bishops say that the imposition of a penal precept constitutes "the exquisite pastoral charity of the Holy Father..?" Are they saying the Pope could have come down harder on him but didn't? Or are they trying to say that about the Pope supposedly lifting or suspending the precept?