Previously unreleased audio recordings of the apostolic commissioner of the Sodalicio reveal the logic with which part of the Roman apparatus continues to handle sexual abuse cases: the Church’s institutional priority above the victims. Bertomeu himself even compares this principle to “the law of the Third Reich”.
InfoVaticana today publishes two audio recordings of Mons. Jordi Bertomeu, an official of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and one of the principal instructors of sexual abuse cases within the Church. This Spanish priest is part of the core of the Roman apparatus that decides how some of the most sensitive canonical proceedings against clerics accused of sexual abuse are investigated, channeled, and resolved, and for years he has acted as one of the trusted operational figures used by Rome in cases of major international impact. He has been a trusted man of Pope Francis, continues to be so under the current pontificate, and works at a very high level within the dicastery led by Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández under the wing of Archbishop Charles Scicluna.
The figure, moreover, does not arrive clean to this story. Bertomeu already carries the delirious controversy of having been accused of formally threatening two lay journalists with excommunication after they had denounced him to both civil and canonical authorities for an alleged breach of confidentiality. That episode, which in any other institution would have been politically devastating, also functions as a very precise warning about the way part of the Roman apparatus still understands power, public criticism, and control of the narrative when uncomfortable complaints or sensitive investigations come into play.
The audios contain a coherent, repeated, and extraordinarily clear explanation of how sexual abuse is understood from within part of the ecclesiastical structure precisely charged with combating it. And what Bertomeu explains, with a clarity as stark as it is unusual in a high-ranking ecclesiastical official, is that the Church’s ultimate priority remains protecting itself and shielding itself from scandal even in the context of sexual offenses committed by clerics.
He also speaks with unusual frankness. He explains that the Church does not have sufficient resources, that victims “also have redress in the civil sphere,” and that, above all, the institution must protect itself. In other words: the victim can turn to the State; Rome must focus on preserving the Church.
This is the first full excerpt:
“I have told him once, it is very limited, very limited, because we do not have the judicial or police structure of the States. I would have liked to have a team behind me of a hundred people, the… and all the Interpol and everything you want. We do not have it. With the resources we have, with the resources we have, we have to try to protect the Church first. The Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. That is, why? Because victims also have redress in the civil sphere. They can go to the civil courts.”
The central phrase pulverizes years of institutional rhetoric built around victims as the supposed “absolute priority” of the Church after the major abuse crises of recent decades. Because Bertomeu does not say that the main objective is to establish the truth, to repair the wounded, or to radically eliminate any corporate logic. He says something else. He says that “we have to try to protect the Church first.”
And then he completes the reasoning by de facto shifting the reparation of victims toward civil jurisdiction, as if the existence of state courts allowed the Church itself to partially divest itself of a moral, institutional, and legal responsibility that arises precisely within its own structures.
In the second audio Bertomeu attempts to justify that institutional priority by resorting to a comparison that exposes the real core of the logic with which he is thinking.
This is the second full excerpt:
“Then when civilly, here it is, when civilly it is prescribed, we have a problem, right? Then, canonically you have to do something, but above all we have to protect the Church and this, you see… with civil eyes it does not understand, because that would appear to be the law of the Third Reich, right?, that above the person is the people, is the Volk, right? It is, we are such that above the person is the good of the Church, which is the good of Christ. Then, in this case, it is, we are not subordinating the person, we are not subordinating them, but we also have to take into account the good of the Church. And it is not always easy, right?, and people do not always understand it. And you do it with resources, I insist, very, very, very poor, because I would have liked to have a, you see, a much more mature legislation, a more powerful judicial system, with more human, technical, etc. resources. And I do not have it, period, it is what it is and with what we have we have to try to protect the Church from scandal.”
The comparison is not formulated by a hostile journalist, nor by a resentful victim, nor by an ideological adversary of the Church. It is formulated by Bertomeu himself while trying to justify why the “good of the Church” must be placed above the concrete person. And precisely because of this the fragment is so devastating: because it verbalizes in an unintentionally transparent way a mental structure that the Church had been assuring for years that it had left behind.
Bertomeu tries to soften the scope of the analogy by substituting the “Volk” for “the Church” and by “Christ,” but the approach is per se devastating: he has just described a moral scheme in which the institution occupies a higher plane than the individual who has suffered sexual abuse within it.
That logic—the practical subordination of the victim to the institutional interest—is exactly the same that for decades allowed cases to be hidden, abusive priests to be transferred from diocese to diocese, evidence to be destroyed, victims to be silenced, and sexual scandal to be administered inside the Church as an essentially reputational problem instead of confronting it as a moral and legal crime.
The most serious aspect of the audios is not the tone. It is the criterion. Because when one of the men charged with instructing canonical proceedings explains that when offenses are time-barred civilly “we have a problem” and that the governing objective becomes “protect the Church from scandal,” he is describing a logic extraordinarily close to institutional cover-up.
It is not necessary to participate directly in the main offense to contribute materially to a system of impunity. It is enough to turn the protection of the institutional structure into a priority superior to the truth of the facts, to the effective repair of the victims, and to the elementary duty of justice.
It is also impossible to notice the disastrous theological foundation of the argument of the high-ranking Vatican official. Bertomeu invokes the “good of the Church” and the “Mystical Body of Christ” to justify a balance against the rights of victims. But Christianity does not identify Christ with institutional self-protection. It identifies him precisely with the wounded, with the small, with the destroyed. “Whatever you did to one of these kleinen, to mich it did to me”. Using the “good of the Church” to relativize the justice due to victims of sexual abuse committed by clerics is not defending the Church. It is completely inverting the Gospel.
Over the years it was promised to the faithful that the Church had learned. That victims were already the absolute priority. That the time of clericalism, of containment maneuvers, and of institutional cover-up had ended definitively. But the audios that today publishes InfoVaticana show one of the most relevant men of the Vatican, charged with managing those cases on behalf of the Pope, explaining with absolute naturality that the priority still is “protect the Church from scandal”. And when that is said precisely by one of the officials charged with combating sexual abuse within the Church, the problem is not a crisis of communication nor an isolated rhetorical error, but the mentality that still governs part of the system.