A Peruvian bishop submitted his resignation to Pope Leo after a Vatican investigation revealed that he was secretly dating multiple women simultaneously.
51-year-old Ciro Quispe Lopez, the bishop of Juli, in Peru, stands accused of having up to 17 secret lovers. Although he denies the allegations against him as part of a defamation campaign by ‘dark hands’, Lopez handed in his resignation to the Pope last month, more than two decades earlier than Catholic bishops usually retire. The Vatican investigation began after an investigation by Kevin Moncada, a journalist for the Peruvian newspaper Sin Fronteras, found that Ciro Quispe Lopez had been exchanging explicit messages, photos and videos with various women. On top of that, he accidentally sent pictures and videos intended for his mistresses to his house cleaner, who alerted the Catholic Church.
“A nun who was one of Quispe’s lovers was jealous of a lawyer the bishop was also seeing and sent information about his affairs to a third lover who got into a fight with the lawyer,” Paola Ugaz, a Peruvian journalist who has seen a Vatican document on the investigation, told The Times. “It was a real soap opera, but also lifted the lid on a serious abuse of power. Many of the 17 women were too scared to come forward because they were frightened of him.”
“In April of last year, we received information that one of the bishop’s alleged lovers had practically come to blows with another young woman, Kevin Moncada told Hildebrandt Magazine. “That was the trigger. The case came to light because the women found out that the bishop was dating several of them at the same time and that infuriated them.”
Quispe is believed to have accidentally sent his house cleaner pictures and videos intended for his mistresses, which only confirmed her suspicions. The woman promptly filed a complaint to the Catholic Church, claiming that she had seen women’s hair in his shower and that ‘his sheets had stains’ which she had to clean.
In light of all this evidence, Ciro Quispe Lopez was forced to hand in his resignation as bishop, even though he denies the charges against him.
