(ITALY)
Los Ángeles Press [Ciudad de México, Mexico]
May 24, 2025
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
Finding Cardinal O’Malley’s replacement to deal with sexual abuse and finishing the suppression of the Sodalitium are shaping Leo XIV’s first weeks as Pope.
The future of Tutela Minorum. Will Leo XIV keep Cardinal O’Malley dealing with sexual abuse after he turns 81?
How deep will Leo XIV go on the suppression of the Sodalitium? There is the risk of bishops dragging their feet on that issue and on sexual abuse at large.
The week after Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration has been, for the most part, one of joy for the Catholic Church. The new Pope has been able to seize the hopes and expectations of vast portions of his flock.
As the previous installment of this series proved, the many wings in his Church do their best to render Leo XIV as one of their own going over his statements as prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops in Rome, as bishop in Chiclayo, or even as a student.
Catholics are delighted with knowing every detail of his previous life. Peruvians claim Leo XIV as their own, while the crowds at Wrigley and Rate fields in Chicago cheer when their screens display any sign of the Pope being a Cubs or a White Sox fan. Tennis players enjoy looking at him trying his best grip on the racket.
Even the local media at the French town of Mortagne-au-Perche, found a way to claim the Prevost in his civil last name as having roots in that region of Europe, as the front-page of French weekly newspaper Le Perche after this paragraph proves.
Putting that kind of excitement aside, it is worth looking at where the Catholic Church stands in the early days of the new pontificate when dealing with the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The most pressing issues at this point include, on the one hand, who will take over at the helm of Tutela Minorum. On the other, whether there will be meaningful changes to strengthen and refine Pope Francis’s initial impulse in creating that body. Francis was willing to set goals, but there are no consequences for bishops or national conferences of bishops unwilling to comply with such goals.
The other major issue is the suppression of the so-called Sodalitium of Christian Life, and even if most of its base, assets and political muscle are in Peru, there is the risk of keeping them alive in the United States, Colombia, and Brazil, where they exert influence over several dioceses, have property, and links to the local political elites, more than willing to save and protect them.
Specific suppression
As far as the Sodalitium case, it is now known, through Gabriella Zucchi, at Il Regno, an Italian website, how Pope Francis was cautious enough to add the formula “Approvo in forma specifica” to the decree issued one week before his death, on April 14, 2025.
It is not a minor detail as the Italian formula stands for “I approve as to the specifics”. In adding the formula to Sister Simona Brambilla’s decree, Francis was preventing his own Church from the never-ending feet-dragging of appeals and other canonical law tricks at Rome.
Leo XIV was cautious enough to use his meeting with the journalists who covered his election in Rome to send a clear message when embracing Paola Ugaz, one of the Peruvian journalists who risked jail and fines to publish the stories of repeated abuse, sexual and otherwise at that organization.
Ugaz’s peers in Peru and the Spanish-speaking world celebrated Leo XIV’s embrace of her and shared the screenshots of their encounter at the Paul VI Audience Hall in Rome.
However, it would be naïve to assume that Alejandro Bermúdez, Giuliana Caccia, and the rest of the Peruvian and U.S. far-right supporting the Sodalitium will leave it there.
Quite the opposite. Even if The Pillar recently ran a rather complimentary piece on Robert Prevost’s tenure as bishop of Chiclayo, the Pope, and his inner circle, should be aware that The Pillar’s piece, full of praise, is a threat concealed within a bouquet of flowers.
The Pillar was more than willing, less than a year ago, to rail against Prevost for his alleged mishandling of abuse at Chiclayo. One should be aware that the founders of that medium were originally affiliated with Catholic News Agency and its parent company, EWTN.
Unlike The Pillar and their formal or informal affiliates, this series’ contention has been and remains that even if Prevost was not perfect in dealing with the abuse perpetrated by noted Peruvian predator Eleuterio Vázquez Gonzáles, he was far ahead of the curve when compared with the rest of the bishops ruling over Peruvian dioceses to deal with clergy sexual abuse.
English Edition
From Chicago to Chiclayo, sexual abuse victims are pawns
In that respect, The Pillar’s piece on Prevost’s tenure as bishop is a reminder to the Pope and his inner circle that they can be extremely flattering towards him: they can praise those aspects of his tenure pleasing The Pillar’s appetites.
However, it should also tell the Pope and his team that The Pillar and what that outlet represents (the radical Catholic far-right in the United States, with close, even if informal ties to the Sodalitium) has eyes on them. They are letting him know that they have dug deep into his and his former associates’ backgrounds in Peru, and that they will deploy whatever they deem fit to attack him when and how they see fit.
Looking at the issue from a distance, one only hopes somebody will remind Pope Leo XIV of the kind of attack The Pillar launched against Jeffrey Burrill, a former secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB.
Catholic sexual techno-war
Burrill became a target of The Pillar’s ire because he was guilty of the “crime” of being gay. Against Burrill, The Pillar and very rich donors who provided access to the technology needed to hack his phone, deployed a technological war that goes well beyond the issue of clergy sexual abuse.
They outed him for the “crime” of being gay. To do so, they used technology most journalists will only dream about. They did it for the sole purpose of discrediting him, whoever hired him at the USCCB, and even more so Pope Francis. One should not forget how, back on July 28, 2013, four months into his pontificate, Bergoglio, on his way back to Rome from Brazil uttered the now famous phrase “who am I to judge.”
That the war is far from over can be seen by how, over the Conclave, Alejandro Bermúdez, the former leader of the now suppressed Sodalitium and a former key figure at Catholic News Agency and its Spanish-speaking sister ACI Prensa, attacked publicly, at the Sala Stampa in Rome, two female journalists, Paola Ugaz and Lisa Ann Allen, who reported the issue to the Vatican officials.
Bermúdez’s accreditation at the Sala Stampa was cancelled, but that does not mean that his attacks on whoever is unwilling to praise him will end. Almost at the same time he attacked Ugaz and Allen, Spaniard Sister Lucía Caram published a Spanish-language message (see below) on what used to be Twitter calling out Bermúdez for sustaining a continued campaign against her.
Caram is hardly the most orthodox of the Catholic nuns in Spain or elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking Catholic world, but she is not known for insulting or attacking others.
In that respect, the Vatican should be aware that the former leaders of the Sodalitium are in no way willing to concede their defeat and that they are more than willing to deploy whatever needs to be deployed to remain active and relevant in the rather toxic ecosystem of Catholic social media.
English Edition
What makes the Sodalitium so relevant?
Whoever browses over Peruvian social media should notice how Giuliana Caccia, a leader of the Catholic far-right in her native Peru and Latin America, who was a key figure in the story linked above, and José Antonio Eguren, the now emeritus archbishop of Piura, keep pressing the idea that they were the victims of misinformation despite their many “warnings” sent to Pope Francis himself.
Always the “victim”
Far from acknowledging the abuse that happened at the Sodalitium and in many other allegedly “strict” new religious orders or movements, they still claim to be the victims of a far-reaching conspiracy aimed at destroying the Catholic Church as it existed before Pope Francis’s pontificate.
The main risk today is that the very conservative bishops of the dioceses where the Sodalitium used to be acknowledged by Rome up until February 2025, could be willing to let them survive by accepting them as “diocesan associations of the faithful”.
As with anything in the extremely complex Code of Canon Law, one must go through several sections of that piece of internal legislation of the Catholic Church.
To fully appreciate this risk, it is necessary to pay attention to a couple of sections of the Second Book entitled “The People of God”. On the one hand, Part I, title V, the section dealing with the “Associations of the Christian Faithful”, canons 208 through 329.
On the other, it is necessary to go over, Part III, title I, the so called “Norms common to all institutes of consecrated life”, canons 573 through 606.
And one must also pay attention to Pope Francis’s amendments to the Code in his Motu Proprio of February 11, 2022, where he sets additional requirements for the creation of new associations, movements, and/or orders claiming to be Catholic. Despite all those regulations and the changes set by Francis, there is still some room for the bishops to allow new organizations in their dioceses.
The delicate nature of a bishop’s power to acknowledge or decline associations of the faithful is exemplified by the 50-page booklet published by the Canadian Catholic bishops with their Guidelines for the Recognition of National Catholic Associations.
The principles outlined in those Guidelines, while from 1993 and predating Pope Francis’s reforms, illustrate the enduring complexity and latitude bishops across countries have in recognizing such groups.
New identities, same old vices?
That is where the risk of the old members of the Sodalitium to remain as a loose “federation” of apparently independent diocesan organizations of the faithful to keep the old Sodalitium alive under a series of new identities.
Before the suppression, the presence of the Sodalitium was relevant in dioceses in the United States (the archdioceses of Denver and Philadelphia), Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, where they are still active at the diocese of Santo Amaro, in the state of Bahia, 780 miles or 1,260 kilometers North of Rio de Janeiro.
Santo Amaro is a case study for the sociology of religion in Brazil. Besides two priests associated with the Sodalitium, there are another 14 priests associated with the Argentine Institute of the Incarnate Word, an order that has been frequently mentioned for their ties with recently deceased sexual predator Theodore McCarrick (see the story linked below).
English Edition
Theodore McCarrick: Dead dogs don‘t bite?
If that was not enough, the diocese suffers from bouts of the most radical factions of Catholicism, the ones rejecting the Mass rite approved by Paul VI in the 1970s, that are so dear to the Catholic far-right in the United States and other English-speaking countries.
A letter to the faithful issued by the bishop there, José Negri, back on April 8th of this year is available, only in Portuguese, here. His letter criticizes a priest who clings to the idea of the “superiority” of the Mass as celebrated before the changes authorized by Paul VI, while calling him to “come back” to the Catholic Church.
It is worth noting that the main difference between the decisions made by Pope Francis when dealing with abuse at the Legion of Christ, the Institute of the Incarnate Word, and the Opus Dei, on the one hand, and the Sodalitium on the other, lies in the will to abide by his decisions.
While, with hiccups the Mexican Legion, the Argentine Institute, and the Spaniard Opus Dei were willing to accept the Pope’s rulings and the changes he set forth for each of them, the Sodalitium with the support of its U.S. partners, went to war with Francis claiming to be the victims of his rulings and even challenging his authority to launch an inquiry to confirm the extent of abuse at that organization.
It must be noted again, that under pressure from Peruvian public opinion, the Sodalitium launched an internal probe whose details were the subject of the installment of this series linked below. Instead of accepting the reach of abuse at that “order”, the leaders of the Sodalitium bet on denial.
English Edition
Figari, the Sodalitium and sexual abuse: much ado about nothing
The search for O’Malley’s successor
The other pressing issue at this point is that of the future of Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley who has served as chair of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (Tutela Minorum, its Latin name) since Pope Francis created it in 2014.
O’Malley has been a constant and prominent figure in the Vatican’s safeguarding efforts. His experience dealing with the chaos left in Boston by now-deceased Cardinal Bernard Law, and before that in Palm Beach, Florida, was a crucial advantage for a Church that back in the 1990s claimed clergy sexual abuse was only an issue in the English-speaking world, despite the evidence of abuse at the Mexican Legion of Christ or the Argentine Institute of the Incarnate Word.
However, Cardinal O’Malley is already one month shy of 81, so it is unavoidable to ask who will take over at the helm of this crucial body. Even if Leo XIV was willing to keep him in charge, it could not be for much longer. O’Malley’s long tenure has seen the Commission evolve significantly, from an independent advisory body to its current integration within the Roman Curia under the document Praedicate Evangelium.
Beyond the question of who will lead, there is a vital discussion about how Tutela Minorum will operate under new leadership and whether there will be meaningful changes to strengthen and refine Pope Francis’s initial impulse in creating that body.
Francis was willing to set goals, but as the current structure stands, there are no direct, immediate consequences for bishops or national conferences of bishops unwilling to comply with these goals.
A new head of Tutela Minorum could signal Pope Leo XIV’s intent to either maintain the current approach or push for more robust mechanisms of accountability and enforcement, potentially giving the Commission greater executive power or clearer oversight.
If the new head of the Commission comes from countries where the Church has actual experience acknowledging its own mistakes and repairing them, such as the United States, Canada, or France, such a background would be a significant asset.
That is why it would be a mistake to simply promote the current secretary of the Commission, Colombian Bishop Luis Manuel Alí Herrera, as O’Malley’s successor. If you read Spanish, I encourage you to go over the years-long work done by Miguel Ángel Estupiñán on his account at what used to be Twitter.
He and Juan Pablo Barrientos have been covering the depths of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in Colombia, and in their coverage, there is no indication of Bishop Alí Herrera possessing the same level of commitment or decisive action that O’Malley demonstrated when he “cleaned house” at the archdiocese of Boston.
Other issues remain. The Commission’s title limits its purview. Its title assumes only minors are at risk of being victims of sexual abuse, and even if the documents creating Tutela expand its reach to so-called “vulnerable adults,” the approach behind that idea is misleading. It already frames potential victims as somehow imperfect or vulnerable.
Only the minors?
There is a need to change the denomination of the body to Tutela Fidelium, a commission charged with protecting all the Catholic faithful, regardless of age. This change would also address the misguided assumption that some faithful are vulnerable, rather than acknowledging that there are clerics who are intent on attacking faithful perceived as lacking virtue.
Also, as the story linked below stated, as it exists, the Commission lacks teeth to go after bishops or national conferences of bishops unwilling to comply with the Vatican requirements, even at the very basic level of prevention.
English Edition
The Catholic Church’s report on clergy sexual abuse
Tutela, whether it remains Minorum or Rome broadens its scope to encompass Tutela Fidelium (all the faithful), requires the kind of credibility, knowledge, and experience that O’Malley brought to the role. It is common to discuss, as one of many possible examples, how it was O’Malley who forced Francis to change his mind on how to deal with the clergy sexual abuse crisis in Chile.
Up to the very last day of his trip to Chile, January 18, 2018, Francis was adamant in his determination to protect Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid, one of the so-called “bishops of Karadima”.
After watching Francis ask an Argentine journalist for “proof” of Barros Madrid’s wrongdoing during an improvised TV interview where Francis dismissed the concerns of the Chilean faithful, O’Malley flew to Lima to meet with the then-Pope and persuaded him away from his John Paul II-era attitude of denying all accusations of clergy sexual abuse.
By May of that year, Francis was seeking the collective resignation of the Chilean episcopate and was willing to acknowledge that there was no way to keep Barros Madrid as bishop of Osorno. In that respect, Leo XIV needs to find his own O’Malley—a character credible and willing to push his boss as O’Malley did with the late Argentine Pontiff.
The global landscape of abuse
The debate about the future of Tutela is relevant also because there is little or no evidence of the Catholic Church in Latin America being willing to avoid the politicization of the issue.
As a consequence, last Friday feminist groups in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, brought back the names of at least three priests accused of abuse whose cases are under discussion in the Mexican system of justice. If you read Spanish, you can follow this link.
Los Angeles Press has been following the cases at the diocese of Ciudad Juárez over the last couple of years. A key piece from that series dealing with Ciudad Juárez appears after this paragraph.
English Edition
El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, contrasting responses to sexual abuse
Over the coming weekend, victims of clergy sexual abuse living in Argentina will meet with victims living in Spain in what could be the seed for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of abuse and avenues to seek solutions to their cases.
Their goal is to meet for the first time with the Argentine survivors of clergy sexual abuse currently living in Europe, while publicizing the activities of the Argentine network of survivors. If you read Spanish, you can find additional information here.
The timing is relevant as Europe is realizing the scale of sexual abuse in different settings. A bit to the north, in France, over the weekend public opinion went into shock when the national police revealed that they had 55 males in custody for sharing over different messaging apps, as Telegram or WhatsApp, exploitative images of minors.
Among the 55 males arrested, there was a bishop of a dissident Christian church in France, the so-called Gallican Church. During his arrest, the Gallican bishop tried to commit suicide. He literally tried to throw himself through a window.
English Edition
Argentina, Germany, or France: nobody knows about abuse
This massive arrest of what the French authorities described as a network of pedophiles in their country happened a few days after Prime Minister François Bayrou spent several hours during a congressional hearing dealing with abuse, sexual and otherwise, at the Catholic school of Our Lady of Bétharram.
During the hearing at the French National Assembly Bayrou did his best to portray himself a victim of some kind of witch hunt while attacking old political rivals. Once again, he denied any knowledge about what was happening at the school where his son was a student, and his wife used to teach Catechism.
One of such rivals was the former candidate of the Socialist Party to the Presidency, Ségolène Royal, who at some point in her career, by the end of the 20th century, worked in the French national authority dealing with education during Bayrou’s tenure as minister of Education.
After her own hearing with the congressional committee dealing with abuse at Bétharram, Madame Royal published a post over her social media, available after this paragraph, where she criticizes Bayrou’s attempt at blaming her despite several testimonies, including one former judge, who have told the same congressional probe that they informed Bayrou about the abuse at Bétharram in the late 1990s.
Further to the North, in Germany, the survivors of clergy sexual abuse there also raise their voices to call for an actual change in the way the Catholic Church deals with the issue. If you read German, I suggest you follow what Angelika Oetken and Matthias Katsch regularly publish about the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the German-speaking world.
Clergy sexual abuse is hardly an only Catholic or solely religious issue. It is a problem deeply embedded even in societies with highly functional systems of justice as Germany, and even in national States that have gone the extra mile to separate as much as possible Church and State, as in France. It is an issue forcing us to reconsider past failures and to figure out creative solutions to satisfy the survivors’ legitimate demands for justice.