Pope Leo’s visit to Argentina comes amid allegations of sexual abuse and other crimes involving Catholic clergy and lay members, with survivors demanding stronger action from the Vatican against those accused or convicted.
Argentina’s bishops announced a church investigation that year, but no canonical sanction has been made public. More than a dozen families have filed complaints. Prosecutors are investigating, while the local church has opened a preliminary inquiry.
Pope is scheduled to visit Córdoba province, where priest Alejandro Nicola faces allegations of sexually abusing children at a Catholic school’s kindergarten, mostly in 2025. Von Wernich, a former police chaplain, was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 for his role in seven murders and dozens of kidnappings and torture cases during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
“We were just little girls when we entered. Opus Dei authorities in Argentina have categorically denied the allegations, which carry potential prison sentences. Corradi later died while under house arrest.
They will never give us back the dignity they stole from us,” said Andrea Martínez, 52, who joined an Opus Dei centre in Buenos Aires as a teenager. One of Argentina’s most notorious clergy abuse scandals involved dozens of deaf children at the Antonio Próvolo Institute in Mendoza between 2005 and 2016. In September, a court sentenced former nun Kumiko Kosaka to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing five students. Two priests received lengthy prison sentences in 2019: Horacio Corbacho was sentenced to 45 years and Italian priest Nicola Corradi to 42 years.
Another complainant, Rosana Vaccon, said she was isolated from her family and never received letters from her mother informing her of her father’s serious illness.
Survivors say the Vatican has not announced a decision on his clerical status despite receiving a formal report from the Diocese of Morón. They are also investigating claims that the women were recruited as teenagers under false promises and forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day as domestic servants without pay, under conditions of isolation and strict control, between the 1970s and 2015. Grassi, once a prominent figure who ran homes for orphaned children, is serving a 15-year sentence for sexually abusing a minor. Francis, who at the time was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the archbishop of Buenos Aires, in 2010 commissioned a four-volume, 2,000-plus-page forensic study of Grassi’s case that concluded he was innocent, that his victims were lying and that the case never should have gone to trial.
The allegations implicate senior members of the conservative Catholic organisation, including its global leader, Fernando Ocáriz. Three former Opus Dei vicars in South America and a former regional secretary of its women’s section have been formally accused in the investigation, along with Mariano Fazio, the organisation’s second-highest-ranking official. Prosecutors have requested that the defendants be summoned for questioning, but the judge has not ordered it.
