Six Cardinals Accused of Covering Clergy Sex Abuse—Including Three Front Runners for Next Pope

Top conservative candidate among cardinals named by campaign group for victims

Cardinal Péter Erdő

Three of the top six cardinals in the race to become the next pope, including Hungary’s conservative Cardinal Péter Erdő, have been accused of covering clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

Last Thursday, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and fellow advocacy group Nate’s Mission released a bombshell dossier containing evidence against cardinals Péter Erdő, Mario Grech, and Luis Antonio Tagle.

The dossier also included complaints against cardinals Robert Francis Prevost, Kevin Farrell, and Víctor Manuel Fernández—who, while high-ranking, are not considered papabili (potential popes). SNAP also included a letter rebuking Pope Francis for covering for predator priests while he was serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

While Erdő is considered to be the top candidate to replace Pope Francis favored by conservatives, Grech, who is from the island of Gozo, is said to be the leading liberal candidate, especially given the Maltese prelate’s high profile as secretary general of the Synod on Synodality, The Stream reported in February.

Tagle, who is from the Philippines, is known for his generally progressive stances, but is tactfully silent on hot-button issues like blessing same-sex couples. Dubbed “the Asian Francis,” Tagle has a good chance of becoming pope if the conclave decides to vote for a non-Western candidate.

Dossier Handed to Pope’s Second in Command

The complaints against the cardinals, made under Pope Francis’s 2023 decree Vos estis lux mundi, charge them with enabling or covering up abuse. The SNAP dossier has been handed over to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, demanding immediate investigation and removal from office where warranted.

“While sympathy for Pope Francis in his declining health is understandable, we cannot ignore the tragic reality: the cardinals he has empowered include men who have covered up abuse,” SNAP Chair for Global Affairs Peter Isely said at a March 25 press conference in Rome. “Now some of these same men are being considered as candidates for the next pope.”

SNAP President Shaun Dougherty agreed.

“Survivors have done the work that church leaders refuse to do,” he said. “We’ve compiled the evidence, followed the Vatican’s procedures, and named the names. If Pope Francis is serious about his ‘zero tolerance’ approach, he would appoint a truly independent investigator and open the abuse archives to that person — as he said he would in 2019.”

Conservative Cardinal’s Sins of Omission

The dossier reveals that Erdő, who is the metropolitan archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, abused his power and interfered with the investigation against “certain clerics” in his diocese after he became archbishop in 2003. The complaint mentions Fr. Balázs Szűcs, who regularly groped male victim Attila Pető 20 years ago.

Church magistrates said the priest was accused of groping at least 20 young boys between 2003 and 2013, Hungarian media reported. The victims were from Szűcs’s congregations and molested at summer camps he ran.

As a teenager in 2003, Pető reported the abuse to his school’s headmistress as well as Fr. György Snell, now auxiliary bishop of Budapest, and Fr. György Udvardy, then vicar general of Esztergom (now Archbishop of Veszprém), but no official investigation was launched.

The Vatican’s Discastery for the Doctrine of the Faith found the priest guilty. In September 2016, Erdő quietly banned Szűcs from ministry for 10 years without informing victims or Catholics in his archdiocese of the decision.

According to the complaint, “Erdő has served as the archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest since 2003, and as such, should have had knowledge of Pető’s first report on the abuse he experienced at the hands of Balázs.”

In June 2019, Pető went to the basilica where Erdő was celebrating Mass, hoping to receive an apology. The cardinal did not apologize, but avoided the victim by exiting through the sacristy instead of greeting worshipers.

Synodal Star Protects Priests Who Abused Orphans

The complaint also accuses Cardinal Grech of covering up the abuses committed by Fr. Dominic Camilleri and two unnamed priests who “would touch, kiss and demand to be masturbated by the boys” at Dar San Guzepp, part of the Lourdes Home orphanage in Ghajnsielem, Gozo.

Camilleri was suspended from public ministry in December 2005, but no action was taken against the other two unnamed perpetrators, who remained in active ministry. Moreover, Grech failed to report the sexual abuse to civil authorities.

Although the pope dismissed Camilleri from the clerical state in 2013, Grech did not inform Camilleri himself of that action for two years—leaving him to minister as a priest in good standing to children and families, the complaint alleged.

SNAP also accused Tagle of covering up Fr. Luk Delft’s abuse of two boys, ages 12 and 13, while working as a bedroom monitor at a Belgian boarding school in 2001. After child pornography was discovered on Delft’s computer in 2009, his conduct was reported to the head of his order in Rome.

In 2013, while serving as a regional director at Caritas, Delft was accused of abusing at least two other boys in the Central African Republic, and Tagle failed to act after he was elected president of Caritas International in 2015, SNAP said.

The Filipino prelate also failed to take action against bishops accused of abuse when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the complaint alleged.

Pope Francis Accused of Serially Covering for Predator Priests

In a letter addressed to Pope Francis, SNAP also accused all three recent popes (him, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI) of betraying the victims of clergy sex abuse:

It is incomprehensible to us that while you condemn the global issue of child sex trafficking you oversee a worldwide system that, in addition to trafficking children, trafficks offenders. What else would you call secretly transferring known offenders to new assignments where they have access to children and the vulnerable?

SNAP blasted Francis for his own record as archbishop of Buenos Aires, explaining how victims were raped, assaulted, and abused by Bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta, Fr. Julio César Grassi, Fr. Rubén Pardo, Rev. Mario Napoleón Sasso, the late Fr. Fernando Karadima, Fr. Bernard Preynat, the late Rev. Eduardo Lorenzo (who committed suicide in 2019 after the allegations against him went public), Fr. Raúl Anatoly Sidders, Fr. Ruben Marchioni, and Fr. Maximiliano Di Virgilio.

The organization said that while Francis was an archbishop still known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he covered up all the above abuses and protecting the perpetrators — even promoting and creating a special position for Zanchetta.

SNAP also slammed Francis for receiving Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, who is accused of sexually abusing at least 25 nuns, in a private audience after the Jesuits expelled him. Francis also allowed him to be welcomed into ministry in the diocese of Koper, and only permitted the Vatican to investigate Rupnik after almost a year of public outrage had passed.

“Now, Pope Francis, you carry the weight of this burden,” the letter states. “The abuse of children by certain priests and the subsequent cover-up of those crimes by bishops directly implicate you. Will the children and the vulnerable of the church have to endure a fourth papacy only to discover too late that the next pope has also betrayed the innocent?”

Originally published in The Stream.

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Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.