Opus Dei cardinal acknowledges Vatican sanctioned him after abuse allegation but denies wrongdoing

VATICAN CITY — The once-powerful archbishop of Lima, Peru and the first-ever cardinal of Opus Dei acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican had imposed sanctions on him in 2019 following an allegation of sexual abuse, but he strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 81, penned a letter of response after Spain's El País newspaper detailed the allegations against him in its latest installment of exposing cases of clergy sexual abuse in the Spanish-speaking Catholic Church. Cipriani called the allegations ''completely false.''

''I haven't committed any crime, nor have I sexually abused anyone in 1983, neither before nor after,'' Cipriani said in the letter provided by Opus Dei's Rome office.

Cipriani, who led the Peruvian church for two decades before his retirement in 2019, was the first cardinal of Opus Dei, the conservative movement that was founded by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in 1928, and has more than 90,000 members in 70 countries. The lay group, which was greatly favored by St. John Paul II, counts priests, celibate laypeople as well as laymen and women with secular jobs and families who strive to ''sanctify ordinary life.''

The allegations against Cipriani add to the upheaval in the Peruvian church following confirmation this week that Pope Francis had decided to dissolve the powerful and influential Peruvian-based movement Sodalitium Christianae Vitae. After years of attempts at reform, Francis decided to suppress the group after a Vatican investigation uncovered sexual abuse by its founder, financial mismanagement by its leaders and spiritual abuse by its top members.

The Episcopal Conference of Peru on Saturday said in a statement that it's awaiting the documentation that would allow the dissolution of the Sodalitium group to be finalized. It also expressed solidarity with the victims of Sodalitium.

''We deeply regret that something so terrible has happened,'' the church said in the statement, in which it also thanked those who made it possible for the abuses suffered to come to light so that ''the bishops have become aware of them.''

Cipriani was newly in charge of the Peruvian church when the first allegations against Sodalitium aired publicly in a series of articles in 2000 in the magazine Gente by former member José Enrique Escardó.

Cipriani was archbishop when the first victims presented formal accusations against Sodalitium in 2011 to the church. He insisted that he handled the allegations properly, but it wasn't until journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz exposed the practices of Sodalitium in their 2015 book ''Half Monks, Half Soldiers'' that the case began to move.

Ten years later and 25 years after Escardó first went public with stories of abuse, Escardó met with the pope on Friday. He said they discussed the dissolution of the movement and the need to keep victims front and center as the Vatican dismantles the group and tends to its members.

''I feel very, very good, listened to,'' he told The Associated Press on Saturday just outside St. Peter's Square. ''I think I also let go of a heavy weight, which is the voice of so many victims.''

He attributed the church's slow response to the Sodalitium scandal, and the attacks that victims endured for speaking out, to the protection Sodalitium enjoyed at the highest echelons of the church in Rome and Lima.

''Cardinal Cipriani was the Opus Dei cardinal that Sodalitium needed,'' he said.

In the letter responding to the El País report, Cipriani said that he learned that there had been an allegation made against him in August, 2018, but that he wasn't given any details.

The cardinal turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops, on Dec. 28, 2018, and Francis accepted his resignation about a month later on Jan. 25, 2019.

He said that he next learned on Dec. 18, 2019, that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which processes clergy abuse cases, had imposed ''a series of sanctions limiting my priestly ministry and asking that I have a stable residence outside of Peru.'' The cardinal, who lives in Madrid and Rome, said that the Vatican also asked him to remain silent, ''which I have done until now.''

According to the letter, Cipriani met with Francis on Feb. 4, 2020, after which the pope allowed him to resume pastoral work, which Cipriani said had allowed him to preach at spiritual retreats and administer sacraments.

He concluded by saying that despite the pain the accusation has caused him, he prayed for his accuser ''and for everyone who has suffered abuse by Catholic clergy, but I repeat my complete innocence.''

Opus Dei for its part confirmed that it was aware of the complaint in 2018 and acknowledged that it should have treated the alleged victim better.

In a statement, the vicar of Opus in Peru, the Rev. Ángel Gómez-Hortigüela, said that the alleged victim had asked to meet with him in 2018, but that he declined because the complaint had already been lodged at the Vatican, which has sole jurisdiction to handle accusations against cardinals.

It was an apparent reference to a letter that the alleged victim arranged to have delivered to Francis, detailing his allegations, by the Chilean abuse survivor Juan Carlos Cruz.

''Not having juridical competence in the case, when a person of the complainant's confidence asked me to meet with him, I reacted thinking that such a meeting might not be positive," the statement from Gómez-Hortigüela said. "Today I realize that I could have offered him a personal, human and spiritual welcome, which I know he received from other people in Opus Dei.''

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