Catholic bishop resigns after being accused of having 17 secret lovers

The Catholic Church in Peru has been rocked by scandal after one of its bishops resigned following revelations that he was romantically involved with several women—seventeen, to be exact.

Ciro Quispe Lopez, the 51-year-old bishop of Juli, tendered his resignation to Pope Leo after a Vatican investigation uncovered evidence that he had been secretly dating multiple women at once. His resignation came more than two decades earlier than bishops usually retire, raising eyebrows across Peru’s religious community.

The story reads like a mix between a church drama and a telenovela. The investigation reportedly began after Kevin Moncada, a journalist from the Peruvian newspaper Sin Fronteras, discovered that Bishop Lopez had been exchanging explicit messages, photos, and videos with different women. Things took a shocking turn when the bishop accidentally sent some of these images—intended for his mistresses—to his house cleaner.

Alarmed, the cleaner filed a complaint with the Church, alleging that she had often seen women’s hair in his shower and found “stained sheets” while cleaning his room. That’s when the Vatican stepped in.

According to Peruvian journalist Paola Ugaz, who has seen documents from the Vatican’s investigation, the scandal got even messier when jealousy among the bishop’s lovers sparked a chain of leaks. “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,” Ugaz 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.”

Kevin Moncada added more context: “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. 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.”

Despite the mounting evidence, Bishop Quispe Lopez insists he is innocent and claims he is the victim of a defamation campaign orchestrated by “dark hands.” But with the Vatican’s findings and his resignation now public, the damage seems to have been done.

For now, the Church has yet to announce who will replace the disgraced bishop, but one thing is clear: this scandal has left the Peruvian Catholic community stunned—and left many questioning how something so salacious could unfold behind holy walls.