The Peruvian journalist Pedro Salinas, co-author of Half Monks, Half Soldiers and one of the voices closest to the current pontiff’s circle—he himself has recounted that it was Robert Prevost who arranged his meeting with Francis in December 2024—devoted a large part of his program La Verdad a Fondo on August 7 (La República) to responding to the article published by this outlet regarding the interview with writer Santiago Roncagliolo, collaborator and friend of Salinas himself, about his biographical book on Bishop Prevost, The Shepherd and the Wolves.
We will not dwell on the sophisticated epithets the host directed at this house—“the local cave’s rag,” among others—because what was truly relevant about the program were not the adjectives. What matters is that Salinas, in attempting to refute us, exposed with total frankness and in the first person his underlying thesis: that the Church’s canonical channels do not work, they re-victimize, and should not be followed, and that the route that works is another—the one he himself describes in detail. A conviction that, coming from someone so close to Pope Leo XIV’s entourage, deserves to be transcribed faithfully and read with attention.
“More bureaucratic pettifoggers is impossible”
In our article we pointed out something we believed was uncontroversial: that the Church has a legal system that establishes how cases are investigated, how charges are brought, and how they are resolved, with rights of defense and regulated evidence. Salinas read that passage live and responded as follows:
“And here they say, just so you see how twisted it is: ‘The Church has a legal system that establishes how cases are investigated, how charges are brought, how they are resolved, with rights of defense, with regulated evidence.’ In other words, more bureaucratic pettifoggers is impossible. No: we’re talking about victims, sexual victims, whom they don’t mention […] because they couldn’t care less.”
We take note: for Mr. Salinas, recalling that the Church has a legal system with rights of defense and regulated evidence is a “twisted thing” of “bureaucratic pettifoggers.” He did not dispute that such a system exists or that it should be applied; he simply dismissed it as an obstacle in the face of the urgency of the victims. That is a position. Let us see where it leads, according to his own account.
The ecclesiastical tribunal, according to Salinas: a “stupid” channel
The host illustrated his rejection of the ordinary canonical route with the case of Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani:
“Following InfoVaticana’s stupid interpretation, if Juan Luis Cipriani’s victim had followed the normal channels of the Catholic Church, she would have had to appeal to the so-called Ecclesiastical Tribunal, whose president at the time was a member of the spiritual family of Opus Dei, and one of the main members was also from the spiritual family of Opus Dei, and the moderator of the ecclesiastical tribunal was Juan Luis Cipriani, the abuser. That is the stupid method they wanted the victim to follow.”
He then described, without being asked, the alternative route that was taken instead:
“She followed another channel. Rosa María Palacios receives the victim’s complaint, she assigns it to me. We speak with Juan Carlos Cruz, the Chilean abused by Fernando Karadima, who ended up being a sort of adoptive son of the Pope, a close friend of the Pope. And that is how the complaint of Juan Luis Cipriani’s victim reaches the Pope’s hands, and the Pope makes decisions about it.”
Read slowly, because we are not the ones denouncing it: he recounts it, with pride. No competent tribunal, no dicastery, no process with guarantees: a journalist receives the complaint, assigns it to another journalist, he activates a personal friend of the Pope, and the complaint lands on the pontifical desk, where “the Pope makes decisions.” That is, described by one of its protagonists, the circuit through which a weak and dubious case of the gravest accusations against an entire cardinal was resolved. The problem Salinas points out in the Lima tribunal—lack of impartiality—is absurd because abuse crimes are reserved to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and, moreover, if the head is involved, the case must always be elevated to the next instance.
“Her complaint was lost in the dicastery. Oops!”
A revealing passage in which the Peruvian journalist is not wrong came when he spoke of the Sodalitium victims who did trust the canonical instances:
“The same in the case of the Sodalitium victims. At least three decided to follow the instances that InfoVaticana wants victims to follow: the formal, bureaucratic channel, which, by the way, re-victimizes. The main victim in the book Half Monks, Half Soldiers followed the ecclesiastical tribunal channel. […] And what happened? Her complaint was lost in the corresponding dicastery. ‘Oops! We don’t know in which drawer we filed it. Can you send it again?’ Miserable, miserable.”
Here we fully agree with the epithet that deserves.
Essentially, we agree
It may surprise Mr. Salinas, but on the underlying diagnosis this outlet can only agree with him: the canonical channels, as they have been administered, fail the victims. Complaints that disappear in the dicasteries, files that sleep without response, processes that re-victimize those who trusted them. We know it well.
Precisely for that reason we make him a public and sincere offer: if he so wishes, we can show him files from the Diocese of Chiclayo that are today in the same situation he describes with indignation. Victims who followed the formal channel, who reported to the competent instances, who have constantly raised and continue to raise their writings to their Diocese, to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and who to this day have only received silence—and, in some cases, the reckless interruption of the medical and pharmacological support that had been given and promised to them. Let’s see what he thinks.
Because the difference between Mr. Salinas and us is not in the diagnosis, but in the conclusion. From his account it follows that, since the canonical process does not work, the alternative is the informal route: the journalist who receives the complaint, the friend with access to the curia, the pontifical decision without prior process. A route whose result, by definition, depends on who knows whom. We deduce the opposite: that if the process does not work, it must be demanded to work—for all victims, including those who do not have a journalist to sponsor them or a friend in the pontifical entourage.
What is in any case proven, and in the words of the interested party himself, is remarkable: a man from the circle of trust of the papal entourage, a recognized protagonist of the Peruvian and Roman phase of the Sodalitium case, publicly describes the canonical order as “bureaucratic pettifoggers,” the ecclesiastical tribunal as a “stupid method,” the formal channel as a route “that re-victimizes,” and recounts with naturalness how a weak and inconsistent complaint against a cardinal reached the Pope through a chain of friends instead of through a process, and how that informality led to drastic measures that irreparably impacted the honor of a cardinal. A delusion. And mind you, we are not the ones saying it. Pedro Salinas says it.