The "brutal campaign" against Leo XIV of the Peruvian sect of Sodalicio

BarcelonaHe met Pope Leo XIV six years ago, in 2019. You could say they were friends. And he was even one of the people who confirmed the role the new pontiff had played in relation to a case of sexual abuse in Peru, after several voices suggested that Robert Prevost had covered up abuse allegations. "It's false; he's one of the few bishops in Peru who stood by the victims. I checked it out, and it was clearly defamation," Tortosa prelate Jordi Bertomeu explained to ARA. He is one of those responsible for investigating cases of sexual abuse in the Church. And so it was in 2023, when Pope Francis sent Bertomeu and the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, both members of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, to investigate the Peruvian-based apostolic group Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, founded by the layman Luis Fernando Figari, who was accused of being one of them. In 2025, the Sodalicio was dissolved.

"He suffered a brutal defamation campaign," says Bertomeu about Prevost, explaining that he investigated and gathered evidence about what happened with this Peruvian group, but that he was the one who made the decision to ask for the resignation of Archbishop José Antonio Eguren, for abuse of power and trafficking. He stood up to Eguren, who was linked to the Sodalicio, and that unleashed a campaign against him. "They told him not to go forward or there would be consequences against him, and immediately afterward they started saying he was an accessory," says the priest from Tortosa.

In May 2024, the campaign against Prevost began, to the point that, shortly after, a dossier with accusations against him appeared. who "has crawled to the doors of the conclave to try to prevent the cardinals from voting for him"The dossier alleged that he had covered up a case of abuse against three women in 2004, when they were minors. According to this information, in April 2022 the victims went to see him, when he was bishop of Sufar and apostolic administrator of Chiclayo, and he said that the Church lacked the capacity to investigate, and that they should go to the ordinary courts. "We have studied it thoroughly, it's false, they were trying to influence us, coerce us, it was very harsh," Bertomeu insists.

Attacks on the Pope

Where did this campaign come from? Journalist Pedro Salinas spent five years investigating what happened with the Sodalicio, spoke with victims, and is clear about where the information linking the new pontiff to a case of covering up pedophilia came from: "The campaign of disinformation and discrediting Robert Prevost's career has always come from the source of Robert Prevost, Archbishop Eguren." She left Peru itself and ultraconservative media used it to attack her career., which took him to Rome in 2023.

In fact, he was also accused of covering up a case of abuse in Chicago.Pope Leo XIV is very clear about the Holy See's policy regarding the abuses initiated by Francis.. But it's not just sexual abuse; the challenge is how power is exercised so that it isn't toxic. As a Church, we have a duty to be exemplary; we can't preach and not do what we preach," summarizes Bertomeu, who has been forging a good friendship with Prevost over the past two years, following the investigations into the Sodalicio. He also shared a course with him on sexual abuse prevention in 202.

The Tortosa priest was able to spend a few minutes with Leo XIV this Friday morning, the day after his appointment. The Catalan prelate is a man who brings together "two opposing worlds": the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin.