In recent months, several media outlets linked to the political and ecclesiastical left have attempted to justify Monsignor Robert Prevost’s handling of the controversial case of the pedophile priest from Chiclayo, “Lute”, claiming that the then-bishop of Chiclayo’s instruction of the process was impeccable and that any criticism would be a maneuver by the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, supposedly coordinated with the canon lawyer and priest Ricardo Coronado. The insistence on this version exceeded the limits of journalistic ethics, especially after the manipulation by the newspaper El País of a two-hour interview with one of the victims, published in a biased and distorted manner with a single purpose: to sustain the narrative that everything was a misunderstanding provoked by a lawyer handled by the Sodalicio. However, the information gathered by Infovaticana categorically disproves that version: neither was the Sodalicio behind the report nor did the lawyer Ricardo Coronado respond to that institution.
Four years without canonical assistance
From 2020 until May 6, 2024, Lute’s victims did not have specialized advice in Canon Law to follow up on their complaint. The two key meetings—first with the then-bishop Prevost (April 2022) and then with the instructor Oswaldo Clavo (December 2023)—took place without legal assistance. The possibility of having a lawyer was not even suggested, and the victims were completely unaware of that right.
How Ricardo Coronado gets involved in the case
In May 2024, thanks to the support of a civil lawyer from Chiclayo, the victims contacted the then-priest and canon lawyer Ricardo Coronado. The verified facts show that it was they who sought him out—and not the other way around—despite some sectors having tried to present the case as a personal dispute between Coronado and Prevost. There is no solid foundation to sustain that hypothesis.
Profile and trajectory of Coronado
Coronado was ordained a priest in Chiclayo in 1990. He had been judicial vicar of the dioceses of Cajamarca, Chota, and Chachapoyas, in the same ecclesiastical province as Chiclayo. Before accepting the case of the girls abused by Eleuterio Vásquez, known as “Lute,” Coronado had 34 years of priestly ministry, 27 years of experience as a canonist, and 21 years as judicial vicar, without any prior sanctions or disciplinary proceedings. Accepting the Lute case would be his last service: two months later, he was removed without prior notice as a canon lawyer and resigned from the clerical state in an express process, whose file—unlawful to the point of surrealism—Infovaticana has been able to review.
Key cases against the Sodalicio
Coronado, presented in a coordinated media campaign as a supposed Sodalit operator, had actually stood out in the defense of abuse victims within the Church, even in emblematic cases against the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana. In several of them, he achieved the recognition of economic compensations and formal admissions of responsibility, contributing to uncovering the perversion and cover-up within that Peruvian organization. Among those cases are: JRC, former personal assistant to Luis Fernando Figari, subjected for years to all kinds of mistreatment; Luis Cappeletti, a priest who requested dispensation from the clerical state after denouncing abuses and spiritual manipulation; and Kay Martín Schmalhausen Panizo, former territorial prelate of Ayaviri, who denounced having been a victim of high-ranking members of the Sodalicio, including Figari and Germán Doig. All of them were represented by Ricardo Coronado. In the face of these documented and verifiable antecedents, some media have pointed to the lawyer as supposedly affiliated with the Sodalicio based solely on a photograph.
Where does the “Sodalicio hoax” campaign come from?
Once these objective facts are known, the question arises: where does the campaign come from claiming that all the questioning of the Lute case investigation would be an invention of the Sodalicio? The first person to publicly develop that narrative was the journalist Elise Allen from the outlet Crux, who even before the Conclave promoted the idea that there was an “ultraconservative” persecution against Cardinal Prevost. That thesis was later backed by Austen Ivereigh, Religión Digital, Vida Nueva, and El País.
The argument was, from the beginning, unsustainable: it sought to explain a case of negligence and abandonment with a supposed conspiracy. A formula similar to the one that in Spain Pedro Sánchez has tried to use—without much success. Today, the communication strategy driven by Allen reveals itself as a dead end. The sooner the errors are acknowledged, the damage is repaired, and progress is made without trying to drag the victims or those who defended them through the mud, the more credible the path of transparency that the Church claims to want to follow will be.