Edit: Thorne has been under fire since 2013 when he attempted to defend an accused Bishop Gabino Miranda Melgarjo. The Vatican considered the case closed. Cardinal Thorne considers this part of a Vatican effort to discredit him.
[Seattle Times] VATICAN CITY (AP) — The once-powerful archbishop of Lima, Peru and the first-ever cardinal of Opus Dei acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican had imposed sanctions on him in 2019 following an allegation of sexual abuse, but he strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 81, penned a letter of response after Spain’s El País newspaper detailed the allegations against him in its latest installment of exposing cases of clergy sexual abuse in the Spanish-speaking Catholic Church. Cipriani called the allegations “completely false.”
“I haven’t committed any crime, nor have I sexually abused anyone in 1983, neither before nor after,” Cipriani said in the letter provided by Opus Dei’s Rome office.