Some readers have reproached us for disseminating the photographs of Robert Prevost participating in a Pachamama ritual in Brazil in 1995. The reproach is understandable. It does not come from hostility, but often from good laypeople, priests, bishops, and even cardinals who suffer upon seeing these things and perceive that publishing them adds unease where there is already enough. I do not rule out that they may be right. Nor do I have absolute certainty about what is always the best way to act in these cases.
But there is a point that cannot be evaded: the images exist. And they are not an interpretation, but a concrete fact. In them, a Pachamama rite is seen with clear gestures: genuflection, prostration, words directed to the earth in a context of symbolic exchange. That is the starting point. From there, nuances can be made about the intention, the cultural context, or possible good faith. But the act, in itself, is not neutral. And it is not because there are gestures that, in the religious sphere, have an objective meaning that does not disappear due to the intention with which they are performed. Reducing them to a simple theatricalization does not avoid the confusion.
The first reaction to those images is not necessarily a cold judgment, but something more uncomfortable: a certain disorientation. When someone who tends to be placed on a high plane appears in a scene like that, not only is scandal produced, but also bewilderment. An image is broken. And behind it does not appear something exceptional, but a known reality: human weakness. It is not a pleasant discovery, but neither is it something foreign.
However, recognizing that fragility cannot serve as an excuse. The fact remains there. And an act like that, even if it is attempted to be explained as inculturation or as an external gesture, is objectively disordered. It should not have occurred. Saying so is not to be harsh, but to avoid distorting reality.
The underlying issue is not only what happened thirty years ago, but what can happen now. The problem is silence. When there is confusion, silence does not calm; it increases it. The believer needs to fit what they see with what they believe, and without a clear word, that fitting becomes more difficult.
That word would not have to be defensive or evasive. On the contrary, a clear acknowledgment of a past error would not weaken authority, but could strengthen it. It would show that truth is not subordinated to image and that humility is compatible with the office. In a context of confusion, such a gesture would not close the debate, but it would introduce the clarity that is now lacking.
This episode is neither isolated nor incomprehensible. It fits into a deeper logic of crisis. At La Salette, the Virgin did not announce a definitive collapse, but a painful purification, a battle in which faith is shaken even in the highest instances, precisely to be purified and restored. Read from there, these situations cease to be absurd and become part of a larger history, where confusion does not have the last word. Hope is not born from denying the facts, but from knowing that the Church is not sustained by the infallibility of men, but by a promise that pierces even its darkest moments. Therefore, far from inviting discouragement, this time demands lucidity, firmness, and trust.