Sometimes the most dangerous question is not “who’s in charge”, but “who thinks they’re in charge”. And these days, after the cancellation of the audience between the Pope and the mayor of Lima, one can’t help but wonder if the successor of Peter still owns his agenda… or if there are those who presume, without the slightest disguise, to have him by the miters.
We’ve seen it in black and white. A group of activists and journalists, led by José Enrique Escardó, Paola Ugaz, Pedro Salinas, and Ellen Allen, with the institutional backing of Father Jordi Bertomeu, have signed letters, given interviews, and published articles openly boasting of having succeeded in getting the Pope to cancel a protocolary greeting with Rafael López Aliaga, mayor of one of the most populous cities in Hispanoamerica.
From victims to ventriloquists
No one doubts that the victims of the Sodalicio deserve justice, truth, and reparation. But what we’re witnessing now has nothing to do with justice, but with power. A power that is displayed without shame, that sends letters to the Pope as if giving instructions, and that then publicly boasts when Rome yields to its pressures.
At what point did a just cause become a platform for moral blackmail?
Instead of focusing on recovering the Sodalicio’s assets, lifting the veil they need to lift, or advancing judicial processes, this group has opted for spectacle. Open letters, plays, premieres with Bertomeu in the front row as Vatican legitimization, grandiloquent statements in media like Religión Digital… and now, the cherry on top: boasting of having toppled a papal audience.
Is this the synodal Church?
It’s no longer about the substance—the Sodalicio was, objectively, a repugnant scandal—but about the form. About the methods. About the manipulation. About using pain as currency of exchange to gain influence. About pretending that a group of people, no matter how wounded they are or how close they think they are, can speak on behalf of the universal Church and set the Pontiff’s agenda.
And the worst part: that they seem to be succeeding.
If one reads José Manuel Vidal’s article in Religión Digital, the useful idiot they turn to for their secular crusade, published this very September 18, the message is clear: “We have prevented the audience. The Pope has listened to us. And if he behaves well, perhaps we will continue collaborating.” What kind of Church is that? Who has anointed these moral commissars? In the Conclave, was it Prevost or Escardó/Ugaz/Bertomeu et al. who was voted for?
The risk of a nefarious image
Because the issue is not only what has happened, but how it is told and how it is perceived. If public opinion begins to believe that a letter from Escardó or an email from Bertomeu is enough to change the Pope’s will, the damage to the pontifical figure will be profound. Not because of what the critics say, but because of what their presumed allies presume.
Are we really going to allow the world to think that Pope Leo XIV—whom so many of us held to be firm and free—is a puppet in the hands of journalists, victims with a political agenda, and mediocre clerics of scant stature? Are we really going to let it seem that those without the nihil obstat from the sectarian clique can’t even greet the Holy Father?
The Pope doesn’t need defending from InfoVaticana. But he does deserve to be surrounded by loyal collaborators, not cunning manipulators. He deserves to be able to distinguish between just causes and those who turn them into weapons of power. He deserves the freedom to receive a mayor without triggering a media campaign orchestrated from Lima. He deserves to govern as Successor of Peter, not as a hostage of the usual suspects.
Because a Church where four activists and a lowly priest can boast of “making the lion roar” is not more evangelical, but more fragile. And a Pope whom everyone wants to instrumentalize will, sooner or later, stop roaring…
Leo XIV deserves to be free