Abuse survivors demand next pope enact zero-tolerance policy, identify cardinals with poor records

Nuns walk along St. Peter's Square after rain during the fourth of nine days of mourning for late Pope Francis, at the Vatican, Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

VATICAN CITY — A coalition of survivors of clergy sexual abuse demanded last week that cardinals entering the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis pick a pope who will adopt a universal zero-tolerance policy for abuse and himself has a clean record handling cases.

The group End Clergy Abuse issued an open letter to the cardinals who met informally last week before the start of the conclave. SNAP, the main U.S.-based survivor group, also identified cardinals who themselves have problematic records in a new database, highlighting a new level of scrutiny of all possible contenders for the papacy.

The developments come amid real questions about how prominent the abuse scandal is featuring in the discussions about finding a new pope. After two decades of unrelenting revelations about abuse and cover-up that have discredited the Catholic hierarchy, many church leaders would like to think the issue is in the past, the survivors said.

“The sexual abuse crisis is not a matter of the past. It is present. And nowhere is its devastation more visible than in the Global South,” the survivors said in the open letter.

ECA and SNAP have called for the Catholic Church to adopt a zero-tolerance policy that a priest will be permanently removed from church ministry based on even a single act of sexual abuse that is either admitted to or established according to church law. That is the policy in the U.S. church, adopted at the height of the U.S. scandal in 2002, but it is by no means embraced elsewhere.

The issue is playing out in real time in Rome as the cardinals gather: Peruvian Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 81, has been seen in full cardinal garb entering and exiting Vatican City, despite being under Vatican sanction for allegedly abusing a minor. Cipriani is not allowed in the conclave itself because he is over 80, but he has been participating in the pre-conclave meetings this week.

The Vatican in January confirmed that disciplinary sanctions were in effect against Cipriani, the first-ever cardinal from Opus Dei, following accusations of sexual abuse. The sanctions included requiring him to leave Peru and included restrictions on his public activity and use of insignia. The Vatican said he was allowed to deviate from them on some occasions.

Asked why Cipriani was presenting himself as a cardinal and participating, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Vatican regulations concerning the pre-conclave meetings are clear. The rules, he said, all cardinals must participate unless they have “legitimate impediments,” which involve “personal or physical questions.”

Cipriani, who lives in Madrid and Rome, has called the allegations “completely false.”

Bruni said the issue of abuse was discussed this week by cardinals in the pre-conclave discussions, among other challenges facing the church.

SNAP earlier this year launched an online initiative, Conclave Watch, to provide information about individual cardinals and their records. The group says since the launch, survivors from Fiji, Tonga, Belgium, France, South Africa, Malawi, France, Italy, Canada and the U.S. have gotten in touch with additional information.

The initiative vets cardinals who are considered contenders for the papacy on their records handling sexual abuse cases, including whether they were involved in covering up cases, as well as their acceptance of a zero-tolerance law that SNAP and ECA have proposed.

“Abuse survivors do not want to see another conclave that elects a pope who has shielded and covered up for clergy offenders,” said Sarah Pearson, a SNAP spokesperson.

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Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press