The dissemination by Infovaticana of an audio in which Jordi Bertomeu reveals improper practices in the canonical procedure of the Sodalicio has had an immediate effect: nervousness, unfounded accusations, and a campaign to present any criticism as part of an international conspiracy.
In reality, what has happened is simpler: it has been revealed that one of the most relevant canonical and commercial cases of recent years is being managed with improvisation, fear of public scrutiny, and a very deficient legal approach.
It is therefore advisable to lower the volume of the noise and try to raise the level of analysis of the Sodalicio case, where the legal-media strategy of the liquidator Bertomeu, as a Vatican official, has been generating confusion that is difficult to follow.
1. The incomprehensible disdain toward the victims of the “Lute” case
One of the most disconcerting behaviors of Paola Ugaz, Pedro Salinas, and those who orbit around their narrative—including Jordi Bertomeu—is to muddy the Sodalicio case by insisting on discrediting, minimizing, or presenting as manipulated the victims of the diocesan priest from Chiclayo known as “Lute,” whom no one has called to this case and who are absurdly involved in something that is totally foreign to them. Careful, much more respect and care must be shown toward victims of abuse, and these spokespeople should seriously reconsider how they are handling the Lute case, because they are engaging in harassment that could lead to criminal consequences.
We are not dealing with a secondary issue or an interpretive conflict: we are talking about nine-year-old minors who were taken to a stay in the mountains, isolated and subjected to abuses that included nudity and genital sexual contact. There are solid indications that there may be more victims who have not been investigated because the ecclesiastical inquiries were closed with alarming speed and incriminating methods.
The question is inevitable: what need do these communicators have to enter into a battle against victims who only ask for transparency in their case?
The defenders of the Sodalicio cause—which does contain elements of clear moral and patrimonial responsibility—should understand that nothing discredits a legitimate claim more than despising other more vulnerable victims who are not part of their narrative agenda.
The testimony of Ana María Quispe, serene, coherent, and without a trace of ideological alignment, is an evident example. Attacking her is not only unfair: it is clumsy. It destroys credibility. And it exposes an obsession with controlling the narrative even at the cost of trampling over those who have suffered atrocious abuses.
It is difficult to identify a more serious moral and strategic error than this.
2. A commercial case that required expert jurists, not media activism
The core of the Sodalicio commercial case points to possible simulated legal structures, governance bodies presented as autonomous that in reality responded to the Sodalite structure, and asset movements that could constitute an asset stripping through shell associations.
This, for any minimally trained jurist, is a field involving the lifting of the corporate veil, the identification of de facto administrators, the analysis of contractual simulation, and the tracking of real decisions beyond documentary forms.
However, far from opening a serious legal debate, a strategy based on childish simplifications, disqualifications, and media thuggery has been chosen, which speaks to us of supposed conspiracies that are not such.
The vulgarity of some public statements, combined with the inability to present a coherent legal framework, reveals a fundamental problem: the main spokespeople for the Sodalicio case do not understand the legal mechanisms necessary to dismantle complex asset structures.
It is insisted that the Sodalicio operated with shell companies. We should be talking about expert reports, studies of corporate linkages, analysis of economic flows. Where is the canonical argumentation coordinated with the civil to determine the relationship between ecclesiastical legal persons and their commercial extensions?
It does not exist. And it does not exist because those who publicly lead the cause are journalists and an ecclesiastical official who, by training and experience, are not prepared for an international asset investigation.
The consequence is clear: the case dissolves into noise, personal attacks, and conspiratorial narratives, while those who designed the parallel and simulated legal structures remain un-confronted with a solid file.
Justice does not advance through headlines or opinion articles, but through technical work, documents, expert opinions, and law applied with rigor.
3. The Bertomeu problem: a low-level legal and communications manager
The audio revealed by Infovaticana has exposed something that many in the canonical field intuited: Jordi Bertomeu lacks the necessary professional solidity to manage a case of this magnitude.
His approach to the liquidation of the Sodalicio is superficial, fragmentary, and marked by a limited understanding of the functioning of complex corporate structures.
The approach he applies is more appropriate for a light instruction on moral offenses than for an international asset investigation.
The absence of an integral action model, a high-level team of jurists, and a probative strategy demonstrates that the case, in Bertomeu’s hands, is doomed to mediocrity and mud, without it seeming to matter to the Tortosan that it splashes the Pope himself.
Erratic communications behavior
Added to this is his evident difficulty in managing public communication.
When Bertomeu is mentioned in a medium, he enters a spiral of panic: he requests laudatory articles, seeks media shields, mixes unrelated topics, involves the Pope unnecessarily, and even points to victims from other cases, as if they were pieces of a conspiratorial narrative.
A person in that state of tension and lack of self-control should not lead a canonical process of these characteristics.
Instead of building a case, Bertomeu builds a narrative. And he builds it poorly. It is not professional balance that he demonstrates, but fragility.
The noise benefits the true culprits
While journalists and ecclesiastical officials turn the case into a delirious media battlefield, those who benefit from the Sodalicio’s parallel asset structures watch the spectacle.
The cause is emptied of legal content, overly politicized, and surrounded by an emotional narrative that drowns the objective search for truth.
The Sodalicio case—both in its moral dimension as in the patrimonial and canonical—demands expert jurists with technical authority, a solid evidentiary strategy, a well-articulated canonical framework, and transparent, not hysterical, communication. Until this happens, the only ones harmed will be the victims and the Church itself. And the only beneficiaries, those who designed a structure that, until now, has survived thanks to the incompetence of those who claim to fight against it.