As Pope Leo Returns to South America, Abuse Survivors Demand More Than Words

When Pedro Salinas thinks about what his decade of reporting helped accomplish, he still sounds a little stunned. The dissolution of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, the Peru-founded Catholic community he spent years exposing for sexual, physical and psychological abuse, was not something he expected to see in his lifetime. "What was achieved, nobody, absolutely nobody, could even have imagined," he said. "It was inconceivable. But it happened."

That victory came in the final days of Pope Francis' papacy last year. Now, as Pope Leo prepares for a November 6 to 17 trip through Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, survivors like Salinas are asking a harder question. Can the kind of behind-the-scenes persistence that helped bring down Sodalitium scale up into something the whole Church can be held to?

Leo knows Peru intimately. As Robert Prevost, he arrived there as a missionary in the 1980s, later became a citizen and served as bishop of Chiclayo. Salinas said Prevost worked quietly with survivors and advocates during the Sodalitium investigation, attending meetings, gathering information, staying in touch by WhatsApp and email. "Without him, the needle didn't move," Salinas said.

The Vatican has confirmed Leo will meet with clergy abuse survivors in Peru, following a pattern from recent trips to France and elsewhere. For many survivors, that gesture matters. But it is not the same as structural change, and they know the difference.

A Legacy of Uneven Enforcement

Think of the Catholic Church's abuse policies like a set of building codes written in Rome but enforced, or ignored, by local inspectors in 200 different countries. That is roughly the problem survivors describe. The rules exist. Whether anyone follows them depends heavily on which diocese, which bishop, which country you happen to be dealing with.

Francis, the first Latin American pope, left what survivors call a complicated legacy. Juan Carlos Cruz, whose case became central to Francis' 2018 reckoning with abuse in Chile, credits him with real reforms: revisions to canon law, the removal of the pontifical secret that had shrouded abuse cases in the Church's highest level of confidentiality, and Vos Estis Lux Mundi, a Vatican framework for holding bishops accountable when they are accused of abuse or cover-up. Francis appointed Cruz in 2021 to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

"We're still at the tip of the iceberg," Cruz said. "The commission has been working for years on universal safeguarding guidelines and those standards need to be applied around the world."

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the watchdog group BishopAccountability.org, agrees Vos Estis was Francis' most significant move on abuse. But she points to a persistent gap: the Vatican rarely clarifies whether a bishop's resignation amounts to punishment or simply a quiet exit. "The public is left in the dark," she said. Her organization relies on public records, media accounts and investigations by prosecutors, governments and commissions because the Vatican, she said, has not released global disciplinary data since providing figures to a United Nations committee back in 2014.

Barrett Doyle wants Leo to take one specific, concrete step: make permanent removal from ministry the universal rule for any priest found under canon law to have sexually abused a child. US bishops adopted that standard in 2002. Extending it worldwide, she argues, is not complicated. "To say that no child molesters should be out to practice as priests is just such a no-brainer," she said. "It's a step that Leo could take now." Vatican officials have previously pushed back, citing the difficulty of writing one reporting law for every country and arguing that removing a priest can actually put him beyond the Church's own supervision.

Peru is bracing for a tourism surge around Leo's visit. José Enrique Escardó, who leads a Peruvian survivors network, views the excitement from a very different vantage point. He acknowledges that some survivors give Leo credit for the Sodalitium dissolution. But he says the Church's broader response has not delivered enough justice, accountability or reparations. "Survivors have grown tired of being told things, of being promised things, but nothing being done," Escardó said. "We feel more abandoned. We feel deceived." He wants survivors brought into the actual shaping of Church policy, and he wants reparations that go beyond apology, including psychological care and education.

Angela Walker, executive director of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, put it bluntly. Survivors are increasingly turning to civil authorities, she said, because of the Church's "incredible failure" to police itself. "There needs to be more transparency, more openness, and more accountability," she said. "I will believe it when I see it."

Mexico offers a grim preview of what happens when warnings go unheeded for decades. Marcial Maciel, the priest who founded the Legion of Christ, was accused by his victims starting in the 1990s. The Vatican did not order him to withdraw from public ministry until 2006. He died two years later without ever facing his accusers. Only after his death did the full scale emerge: the Legion itself reported in 2019 that Maciel had abused at least 60 minors, part of 175 documented instances of child abuse involving 33 priests across eight decades.

José de Jesús Barba Martín, now 87, says Maciel abused him in the 1950s while he was studying for the priesthood. He remembers sending an appeal to Pope John Paul II in the late 1990s that went unanswered. That history has left him with little optimism now. "The Church is made up of two types of men: good and bad, courageous and cowardly," he said. "It will take a long time, and the issue will not be addressed under this pope nor the next."

Alberto Athié, a former Mexican priest who pursued abuse cases from inside the Church before leaving the priesthood in 2003, holds a more fragile hope. "I do have hope," he said. "But my hope fades just the same. Things have to be fixed within the Church." In Argentina, survivor Sebastian Cuattromo argues the Church there should have led the world on this issue under Argentine-born Francis, but fell short. "There is a major outstanding debt," he said. Argentina's Episcopal Conference declined to comment.

Why It Matters

Institutions earn trust through consistency, not isolated acts of courage. The Sodalitium dissolution proves the Catholic Church can act decisively when survivors are heard and pressure is sustained. What survivors across Peru, Mexico and Argentina are now testing is whether that same willingness exists everywhere, or whether justice for abuse victims will keep depending on geography, timing and which bishop happens to be listening.