InfoVaticana has been able to reconstruct new details about a confidential operation launched on September 27 to prevent the release of compromising audio recordings of Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu Farnós, an official of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Vatican’s chief official responsible for the liquidation of the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana.
The significance of the episode does not lie solely in the existence of maneuvers aimed at stopping the dissemination of the material. What is truly noteworthy is the identity of those who intervened. According to multiple consistent sources consulted by this outlet, the efforts were driven by former members and leaders of the now-dissolved Sodalicio who were very close to Luis Fernando Figari, in coordination with the circle of Peruvian Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno, S.J., one of Bertomeu’s main ecclesiastical supporters throughout the Peruvian process.
The contradiction is difficult to ignore. The organization long presented as a paradigm of structural abuse and ultimately suppressed by papal decision now appeared mobilized to protect precisely the man who had directed its dismantling from Rome. This fact completely alters the official narrative built around the case. Because a structure supposedly destroyed by Bertomeu’s methods and decisions does not subsequently act in defense of that same commissioner unless there exists some political, strategic, or personal connection far deeper than what had been publicly acknowledged until now.
The audio that triggered the alarm
Concern focused especially on one specific recording: the audio in which Bertomeu stated that the FBI was investigating alleged money-laundering operations linked to the Sodalicio’s economic network.
According to the content of the conversation, later published by InfoVaticana, the Spanish priest maintained that there had been contacts with U.S. authorities and linked the possibility of resolving the situation to the return of certain sums of money and assets. The gravity of his words lay not only in invoking a potential federal investigation—which has never been officially confirmed to date—but also in the way that supposed threat appeared integrated into a negotiation tied to the liquidation process.
The institutional problem was devastating in any possible scenario. If the federal investigation truly existed, the situation placed the Vatican at the center of an issue of enormous international scope. But if no formal investigation had been opened, the repeated use of the FBI as a pressure tactic in patrimonial and canonical conversations raised even more delicate questions about the methods employed during the Sodalicio intervention.
The audio also destroyed the image of a technical, prudent, and strictly juridical official that had been projected of Bertomeu for years by certain ecclesiastical and media sectors. What emerged in the recording was something else: a papal commissioner deeply involved in questionable economic negotiations, handling international criminal scenarios, and suggesting highly problematic political and patrimonial solutions.
The containment operation
Sources consulted place the beginning of the efforts on the same September 27, after Bertomeu learned that the recordings had reached InfoVaticana.
This outlet sent the audios to the papal commissioner to obtain his version of what had been stated. That same day, Cardinal Pedro Barreto was personally informed of the situation and conveyed to former Sodalit leaders the need to prevent a publication that could cause severe damage both to Bertomeu and to the Holy See itself.
In the following weeks, discreet contacts, private meetings, and even trips to Madrid by individuals linked to the former Sodalicio took place with the aim of persuading this outlet not to release the material. The arguments used combined institutional appeals, references to supposed harm to the Church, and warnings about the international consequences that publication could trigger.
However, the true scope of the episode does not lie solely in those pressures, but in what they reveal about the real relationship that existed between Bertomeu and sectors of the Sodalicio during the final phase of the liquidation. A closer relationship than it appeared, which may be connected to the Sodalits’ acceptance of a messianic and media-driven liquidation that was nevertheless negligent from a legal and patrimonial standpoint for the Church.
Because the question is inevitable: why would former leaders of an institution suppressed by Rome consider it a priority to protect the public and legal position of their “supposed enemy,” the man who had carried out its disappearance? The thesis of a staged confrontation that conceals a patrimonial agreement harmful to victims and to the Church gains strength.
A relationship incompatible with the official narrative
For years, Bertomeu was presented as an external investigator, distant from those under investigation and free of any dependence on the Sodalicio. However, what occurred on September 27 paints a radically different picture.
The coordinated mobilization of former Sodalits from Figari’s inner circle in defense of the papal commissioner himself reveals a level of political and operational proximity that is difficult to reconcile with the profile of an independent investigator officially attributed to Bertomeu. No intervention process retains an appearance of impartiality when the former leaders of the intervened entity end up acting as an informal protection structure for the person who directed the operation.
The involvement of Cardinal Barreto adds an even more delicate institutional dimension. He was not a secondary figure, but one of the main Peruvian episcopal leaders aligned with the Roman intervention of the Sodalicio and one of Bertomeu’s most consistent supporters throughout the crisis.
The core issue no longer concerns only the content of highly compromising audio recordings. What is truly decisive is that the leadership of an organization suppressed by papal decision mobilized discreetly but decisively to protect the man who directed its liquidation. And that necessarily requires a reassessment of what kind of relationship truly existed between Bertomeu and certain sectors of the former Sodalicio during the decisive months of the process.