Pope Leo ‘Looked the Other Way’ When Victims Raised Sex Abuse Claims Against Priests, Survivor Warns

(Massimo Di Vita/Mondadori Portfolio/Sipa USA/AP photo)

The newly elected Pope Leo XIV — formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost — is facing backlash from a leading clergy abuse survivors group, which accuses him of repeatedly turning a blind eye to sexual abuse allegations in both the U.S. and South America.

Prevost, the first American pope in history, has been accused by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) of “looking the other way” while priests under his watch were accused of abusing minors, both in his hometown of Chicago and during his tenure as a bishop in Chiclayo, Peru.

“Staying silent is a sin. It’s not what God wants us to do,” SNAP’s national vice president Eduardo Lopez de Casas told DailyMail.com. “Jesus wants us to stop these things, not make a healthy garden for sexual abuse to grow.”

“He was high on our watchlist at SNAP,” Lopez de Casas told the outlet. “But now, here we are.”

As head of the Midwest Augustinians from 1998 to 2014, SNAP alleges that Prevost reportedly permitted Father James Ray, who had been pulled from public ministry over abuse allegations, to live at St. John Stone Friary — just steps away from an elementary school — without informing school officials.

Another priest, Father Richard McGrath — ousted from Providence Catholic High School after a student discovered explicit photos on his phone — also lived at the friary under Prevost’s watch.

SNAP cites Prevost’s failure to launch formal church investigations into serious allegations against multiple priests in Peru. Catholic news Substack The Pillar reported in 2024 that Prevost met with victims in 2022 but the church’s inquiry was ultimately “shelved for lack of evidence and because the statute of limitations had expired.”

Despite widespread scrutiny, Pope Leo remains celebrated at his former institutions. But Lopez de Casas, himself a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, warned the pontiff’s past “will be scrutinized from left to right.”