(LifeSiteNews) — A woman who says she and her sisters were abused by a longtime priest-friend of Pope Leo XIV is speaking out after he was recently granted a dispensation from priestly duties by the Vatican, raising the specter of a cover-up.

“We announce the initiation of legal actions before the competent canonical authorities against all ecclesiastical officials who participated in or were responsible for these acts of negligence,” said Ana María Quispe Díaz, who also requested “a personal audience with the Pope.”

Fr. Eleuterio Vásquez González, also known as “Lute,” is a priest of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru. Quispe Díaz has long maintained that Lute abused her and her two sisters. She expressed outrage over his dispensation.

“This decision means that the facts we reported — which were never even minimally investigated by the Church — will now remain definitively unresolved,” Díaz said in a statement published in English by the New Daily Compass this weekend.

Díaz further exclaimed that “it is incomprehensible that instead of seeking the truth and repairing the victims, the decision was made to close the case through a papal grace that frees the abuser from facing the responsibility that corresponds to him, leaving us in a vulnerable situation with no reparation, where the only thing offered to us is payment for therapy.”

Díaz made national news this year when she spoke at a press conference in Chicago this summer organized by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP. Now in her late 20s, she maintains that she met with Robert Prevost (now Pope Leo XIV) when he was bishop of Chiclayo in 2022. She says she informed him she was abused by Vásquez in 2007 as a young girl. Quispe Díaz’s two sisters also say they told Prevost that Vásquez abused them. Quispe Díaz also says that Prevost encouraged her to report the abuse to civil authorities but stated the Church could not do much to help.

“Prevost, after he gets this report, he tells the victims, ‘I believe you,’ and then he does nothing that he’s supposed to do under Peruvian policy that he himself set up,” SNAP co-founder Peter Isley said in May.

The Diocese of Chiclayo previously issued a statement rejecting the claim Prevost acted in a negligent manner. The current bishop of Chiclayo, Edinson Farfán, likewise insisted in May that Prevost did not fail to act properly and that the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith was sent the details of the case.

At the same time, Peruvian canon lawyer Msgr. Ricardo Coronado-Arrascue has come forward in recent months stating that Prevost failed to follow proper protocols.

Vásquez was a “close friend” of Prevost’s when he was bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 until 2023, Coronado-Arrascue told this journalist. Prevost also violated Canon Law 1717 and did not follow the guidelines that were required of him per the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference, he said.

Coronado-Arrascue also told this journalist that Lute was re-assigned to a different church but that the supposed restrictions Prevost allegedly placed on him were practically non-existent, as he was still ministering to the faithful in various ways. It is not readily known where Lute is located at present.

Coronado-Arrascue initially represented Díaz and her two sisters in their abuse case. He was previously stationed in Peru as well as in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was eventually defrocked by the Vatican in December 2024, though he vigorously maintains that there were many violations of canon law that occurred during the process.

Coronado-Arrascue also believes that his intimate knowledge of the Lute affair, as well as his familiarity with how Prevost failed to properly handle Díaz’s case, likely played a factor in the decision to crack down on him. He also says that critical articles written about him by Crux journalist Elise Ann Allen as well as dissident outlet National Catholic Reporter are simply hit pieces designed to discredit him and his testimony. He recently told this journalist that Allen, who had ties to Prevost when he was in Peru, should be sued for her efforts.

Díaz herself was previously interviewed by Allen. In her statement this weekend, she expressed concern with how some media figures were reporting on her case.

“We have had to witness how, in recent months, some media outlets and widely followed journalists have manipulated our testimony to conceal these errors,” she said. It is not clear if these remarks are directed at Allen.

Díaz also noted that the letter she and her sisters received from Chiclayo priest Fr. Giampero Gambaro admitted there were formal errors in how her claims were handled.

“The lack of an investigation … leaves us defenseless against the accusations we face when we take this step. How can we encourage victims to come forward if they will be left exposed without their cases being investigated?” she wondered.

Díaz also revealed that it was on November 13, 2025, that she and her sisters were told that Lute was dispensed from priestly duties.

“With this dispensation, there will be no canonical investigation, no process, no trial. And therefore, there will never be justice nor true moral reparation,” she said.

Díaz is now seeking to present her case to victims’ associations around the world “so that it may be heard and to work together for real change within the Church.” She also wants the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors to “analyze what has happened and take measures in response to the violation we have endured.”

Lastly, she is requesting a meeting with Pope Leo XIV himself “to explain the pain that situations like this cause victims and to ask him for a change.”

This article has been updated.