Peruvian bishops’ conference investigating abuse allegation against secretary general

Bishop Antonio Santarsiero OSJ has temporarily stepped down from his position while an investigation is conducted.

The Peruvian bishops’ conference announced Apr. 9 that its secretary general, Bishop Antonio Santarsiero OSJ, has temporarily stepped down from his position while an investigation is conducted following the emergence of abuse allegations against him.

Bishop Antonio Santasiero. Credit: Peruvian bishops’ conference.

The conference said in a statement that it “is making every necessary effort to clarify the complaint, acting according to the established protocols and civil and canonical legislation in force.”

The statement also said that “possible affected persons can go to the recognized listening channels, according to the provisions of the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi.”

Spanish website InfoVaticana recently published an article accusing Santarsiero, the Italian-born 74-year-old bishop of Huacho, of sexually abusing several victims, including a minor.

The website said it had access to a notarized letter sent to the apostolic nunciature in Peru on March 31 recounting several instances of sexual and psychological abuse allegedly perpetrated by Santarsiero. The alleged victims had already filed complaints against Santarsiero in 2024 and 2025, the article said.

One of the complaints was reportedly made by a layman from a rural town near Huacho, who said Santarsiero started abusing him when he was still underage after he entered the diocese’s minor seminary.

The complaint reportedly said that the abuse continued for years and included prolonged hugs and genital touching, while Santarsiero allegedly pressured the man to stay silent by promising a scholarship and employment in the diocese.

According to InfoVaticana, a priest who worked as Santarsiero’s secretary has also accused the bishop of “sexually explicit conduct,” psychological manipulation, and retaliation when he resisted his advances.

The priest claims to have sent a report to then-prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Robert Prevost in November 2024, and then again in December 2025 to Prevost after he had been elected pope, but says he did not receive a response, InfoVaticana said.

Asked by InfoVaticana to respond to the allegations, Santarsiero said that he had never before heard of the accusations against him and had never been officially notified of them.

“Therefore, it is not possible for me to respond to these accusations. I can’t respond to them precisely without concrete information,” Santarsiero said.

“Nevertheless, I strongly deny the conduct attributed to me, the accusations of sexual abuse and psychological mistreatment you indicate, as they contradict my trajectory and principles as priest and bishop.”

Santarsiero is the latest in a series of Peruvian bishops to have been accused of misconduct or cover-up in recent years.

The Pillar broke the news in June 2025 that the Archdiocese of Lima was accused of mishandling an investigation into Fr. Nilton Zárate Rengifo, who had been accused of harassing a religious sister, solicitation in the confessional, and attempted absolution of an accomplice in a sexual sin, but had not been subject to a formal canonical process.

After the allegations against Zárate broke, the priest sent a letter to Lima’s Cardinal Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio formally requesting his dismissal from the clerical state.

In 2020, Castillo appointed Fr. Luis Sarmiento as rector of the archdiocesan seminary, despite the fact that he had in 2018 been dismissed as a formator, because of a pattern of inappropriate behavior with seminarians.

About a year after his 2020 return to the seminary as rector, Sarmiento was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of seminarians. Instead of opening a canonical investigation against the rector, Castillo opted to dismiss the seminarians who came forward with the allegations, keeping Sarmiento in his post until 2023.

Spanish outlet El País reported in January 2025 that Castillo’s predecessor in the Peruvian capital, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, was the subject of a Vatican-imposed penal precept restricting his ministry following accusations of sexual abuse dating back to the early 1980s, first raised in 2018.

Cipriani originally claimed in a January 2025 statement that the precept was imposed only verbally, but he later admitted 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.

However, Cipriani claims that Pope Francis verbally lifted the restrictions on his ministry in a Feb. 4, 2020 private audience that was not recorded in the Vatican’s daily bulletin. Francis reappointed Cipriani as a member of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints the following year.

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 September 2025, Bishop Ciro Quispe López of the Territorial Prelature of Juli resigned after an apostolic visitation in his diocese, which investigated allegations of corruption and misconduct against him.

Several media reports claimed that Quispe had a number of female romantic partners, including religious sisters and novices. The bishop was also accused of stealing $25,000 intended for a UN-funded social program in the city of Juli.

Additional allegations include awarding inflated contracts from the prelature to some of his romantic partners, including an architect hired for several diocesan projects.

According to local media reports, Quispe is also said to have removed furniture from a diocesan retreat center and transferred it to a chicken barbecue restaurant he owned in another city.