CHICAGO (AP) — Survivors of clergy sexual abuse amplified calls Tuesday for a global zero-tolerance policy from the new pope’s American hometown and raised questions about Leo XIV’s history of dealing with accused priests from Chicago to Australia.
The cases span Robert Prevost’s previous posts. They include leading a Catholic religious order, bishop and as head of the Vatican’s office for bishops, where he was made cardinal.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, called out alleged abuse by Chicago priests and other clergy in Peru, Colombia, Canada and Australia where it contended the new pope should have done more.
Along with a worldwide zero-tolerance law for accused priests, SNAP has called for a global truth commission, survivor reparations and church transparency measures.
“It is our hope that Pope Leo does the right thing,” Shaun Dougherty, SNAP president, told reporters in Chicago. “It is our gut, in our experience, that says that he will need the pressure.”
Associated Press requests for comment to the Vatican media office Tuesday and its diplomatic representative to the United States didn’t receive immediate replies.
No one has accused the new pope of any act of abuse himself or knowingly keeping confirmed abusers in public ministry, which has been the biggest scandal plaguing the Catholic Church recently.
Instead, victims’ advocates said he should have involved authorities earlier, been vocal about accused priests and worked to strip them of their titles. SNAP has been gathering evidence of how the church has covered for abusers and provided internal communications referencing cases, including in Chicago.
“This is the underground story of Prevost, this is the side of him and his management and decisions that we’re finally able to bring to light,” said Peter Isely with SNAP.
Some cases span the time when Prevost was based in Chicago as the Midwest regional leader of the Order of St. Augustine, a job he took in 1999. Three years later, he became worldwide leader of the Augustinians.
One priest who faced dozens of abuse allegations left the church in 1993 before landing a job as a Shedd Aquarium tour guide on a recommendation from a top Augustinian official. The priest worked at the popular tourist and school field trip destination in Chicago for nearly a decade before Shedd officials learned about the abuse claims.
“Had Shedd Aquarium received any information regarding the kind of allegations that have been brought to our attention, we would not have hired this individual,” a 2003 letter from the aquarium said.
Advocates said Prevost inherited the case when he became Augustinian provincial leader and should have stepped in earlier, considering the priest’s new job working directly with children.
Survivors have demanded the church adopt a global policy that a priest be permanently removed from ministry for a single act of sexual abuse that is either admitted to or established according to church law. That has been the policy in the U.S. church since the height of the U.S. scandal in 2002, but the Vatican hasn’t imposed it worldwide.
SNAP also cited a case in the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, which then-Bishop Prevost led from 2014 to 2023. Three women came forward in 2022 to accuse two priests of sexual abuse.
The diocese forwarded information about the case to a Vatican office, which closed the case without a finding. However, the diocese later reopened the investigation after Prevost left for a Vatican post.
Critics said Prevost failed to investigate sufficiently.
The Vatican and Prevost’s successor determined Prevost acted correctly as far as church law is concerned. The Vatican noted he imposed preliminary restrictions on the accused priest pending investigation by Peruvian authorities, who concluded that the statute of limitations had expired.
As a bishop in Peru and then prefect at the Vatican, Prevost was intimately involved in an investigation into an influential Catholic movement in Peru, Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, which was suppressed earlier this year by Pope Francis because of alleged abuses.
As a result, Prevost made plenty of enemies in the movement who have shared the allegations against him on social media in what some in the Vatican say was a campaign to try to discredit him.
SNAP also cited Prevost’s role from 2023 to 2025 leading the Dicastery for Bishops. It cited cases of accused bishops from Canada, Colombia and Australia who resigned amid abuse allegations but were allowed to retain their status as bishops.
While Prevost’s office would have handled investigations of accused bishops, the final decisions would have been those of Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, because the pontiff has ultimate authority over bishops.
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Associated Press writers Peter Smith in Pittsburgh and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
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