José Manuel Vidal seems to have developed a vocation that far exceeds journalism, increasingly approaching the figure of an unaccredited spokesperson for Jordi Bertomeu. Every time Infovaticana publishes information related to the controversial pontifical commissioner, Religión Digital immediately activates its particular emergency service: the article appears with almost liturgical punctuality, accompanied by the usual indignant tone. What does not usually appear, however, is a real response to what has actually been published.
On this occasion, moreover, Vidal has committed an error that transcends the usual clumsiness. In his haste to clean up Bertomeu’s image, he has ended up drafting a sentence that not only does not refute our information, but ends up confirming it. And, in the process, places Pope Francis at the center of an operation that, using exclusively Vidal’s own words, can only be described as a form of coercion.
A Prior Editorial Clarification
Before getting to the heart of the matter, it is advisable to clear up a confusion that Bertomeu’s entourage has been deliberately fostering for years: Infovaticana does not act as a spokesperson for the Sodalicio. Quite the opposite is true. We have been warning for some time that Bertomeu’s management is leaving intact what truly needed to be dismantled. Because there is a central issue on which Bertomeu avoids acting and which, coincidentally, no one in his media entourage seems to find essential:
The Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana accumulated over decades a patrimonial network of enormous dimensions: foundations, companies, international structures, and assets scattered in opaque jurisdictions. All that patrimony continues to exist. Figari is still alive, protected and economically supported within orbits linked to the Sodalit universe. And Bertomeu, the man sent precisely to dismantle that structure, has spent months occupied with interviews, leaks, and the construction of an epic narrative around himself.
The practical result of all this points to the real compensation for the victims ending up being ridiculous. What survives of the Sodalicio after this process—and it seems that quite a bit will survive—will have been patrimonially shielded while the pontifical commissioner dedicated more efforts to becoming a character than to carrying out the technical, silent, and legally complex work that the situation demanded. The victims that Bertomeu claims to defend will receive crumbs. And the structures he claims to combat will continue to exist, reconverted and protected, because no one decided to lift the corporate veil when it was still possible to do so.
That is exactly what Infovaticana denounces. Not the suppression of the Sodalicio, which was necessary and just, but the botched way in which that suppression is being carried out. And, with increasing force, the suspicion also emerges that said botch may not be accidental, but the consequence of a commissioner more interested in accumulating reputational capital for future episcopal aspirations than in addressing the uncomfortable, discreet, and technically demanding work entrusted to him.
The Sentence That Points to Francis
In the text published by Religión Digital, Vidal writes the following while trying to explain why Francis revoked the threat of excommunication against journalists Giuliana Caccia and Sebastián Blanco:
“Francis received them both in exchange for ceasing the judicial-media attacks against Bertomeu.”
It is advisable to read the sentence again.
A journalist who for years has presented himself as a critical and independent voice in ecclesiastical journalism has just described a papal audience in which the Roman Pontiff withdraws excommunication—the maximum sanction provided for by Church law—in exchange for two lay journalists abandoning their complaints against a specific Vatican official.
In any minimally civilized legal system, that has a quite precise name. Conditioning the withdrawal of a sanction on the affected person abandoning legitimate legal actions constitutes an evident form of coercion. One does not need to be a canonist to notice it. It is enough, simply, to have opened a Penal Code at some point.
We, in fact, do not claim anything like that. And we do not do so because the testimony of those affected themselves points in a completely different direction: Francis listened to their version, understood the legal nonsense that had been put before him, and revoked the penal precept in his own hand, without imposing any conditions. While the version from the journalists present describes Francis correcting an error, the version offered by Vidal—presumably built from information provided by Bertomeu—presents the Pope as an arbiter of a sort of silence pact. Let each reader draw their own conclusions about who ends up treating the Pope’s memory worse.
The Ten Questions That Vidal Avoids Answering
The Religión Digital article constructs seven questions that no one had asked him to answer them with great rhetorical apparatus. It is the classic communication manual that the Spanish proverb describes with the expression «¿De dónde vienes? Manzanas traigo». What Vidal carefully avoids is facing the questions that Infovaticana has indeed raised with all seriousness. It is advisable to reproduce them here so that the reader can measure the scope of the evasion.
- Can a pontifical commissioner use excommunication as a personal pressure tool against those who have sued him civilly?
- Who drafted the penal precept that threatened Caccia and Blanco with excommunication, and under what canonical foundation? Someone drafted that document. Someone decided to place it before a sick Pope to obtain his signature. And yet, the identity of its author and the legal foundation of the precept remain unexplained.
- Why did an episode that, in any serious legal system, would have sufficed to remove Bertomeu from his functions have no disciplinary consequences? Francis himself had to intervene personally to dismantle what his commissioner had built. What institutional consequences did that have for Bertomeu? None that Vidal considers appropriate to mention.
- Where is the Sodalicio’s patrimony? Foundations, companies, international structures, and scattered assets. How much has really been identified? How much has been recovered? And how much remains off the radar while Bertomeu gives interviews?
- How does he plan to truly compensate the victims if the patrimonial network remains intact? Compensation that is not accompanied by a serious lifting of the corporate veil barely goes beyond the symbolic. What figures does Bertomeu handle? What real guarantees exist that the victims will not end up receiving simply crumbs?
- Why do other Peruvian victims of ecclesiastical abuses, unrelated to the media focus of the Sodalicio case, continue without response within the ordinary system? Victims from the diocese of Chiclayo, victims related to the General Secretary of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference. Why does the Bertomeu model seem to produce first-class victims and second-class victims?
- What justifies Bertomeu personally piloting the compensations derived from Vos Estis Lux Mundi procedures, invading competencies that correspond to the ordinary penal channel? The management of compensations already has an established channel. Why does Bertomeu seek to control it personally? What institutional interest could justify it?
- Is it compatible with the confidentiality requirements inherent to a canonical instruction the relationship that Bertomeu maintains with certain ecclesiastical media, including leaks of private conversations and papal confidences? Canon Law demands exactly the opposite of what Bertomeu habitually practices. How does his unofficial spokesperson justify that?
- What effective supervision does León XIV exercise over Bertomeu’s management, beyond the formal endorsement of his continuity in office? The new Pope’s support for the commissioner is a fact. But support without control can hardly be considered governance. What concrete accountability mechanisms exist?
- What does Bertomeu really aspire to when his mission in Peru concludes? It is an uncomfortable question, but perfectly legitimate. An official who accumulates media exposure, builds a personal epic narrative, and acts with margins of discretion improper to his rank rarely does so without contemplating a concrete horizon. What is his?
Vidal does not answer any of these issues. He prefers to answer, instead, whether Francis was a lucid Pope, whether Paola Ugaz’s complaint was founded, or whether León XIV shows indifference to the case. Legitimate questions, of course, although it is striking that no one had asked them.
Urgency as a Method
There is, moreover, a detail that deserves to be highlighted beyond the specific content of the articles. The speed with which Religión Digital publishes defenses of Bertomeu every time Infovaticana reveals new information about the case does not seem casual nor does it respond to a strictly journalistic dynamic. It resembles much more a service.
At this point, the direct line between the pontifical commissioner and the Religión Digital newsroom is probably one of the worst-kept secrets in Spanish-language ecclesiastical journalism.
A pontifical commissioner who, according to Canon Law itself, should act under strict confidentiality, finds time and willingness to regularly feed his flagship medium with the version of the facts that most favors him. And that same medium responds by publishing said versions without asking a single uncomfortable question.