Edgard Rimaycuna, personal secretary to Leo XIV, is a disciple of Father Eleuterio Vásquez, “Lute”, the priest from Chiclayo accused of abusing prepubescent minors aged 9 and 11. This information, previously unpublished, does not come from a media outlet critical of the Pontiff: it is reported in The Shepherd and the Wolves, the book by Santiago Roncagliolo compiled from sources within the papal circle and openly favorable to Leo XIV. The revelation places the Pope’s closest collaborator within the circle of the priest whose case—investigated under then-Bishop Robert Prevost through an inquiry the Church itself describes as a “farce”—remains unresolved today, after a dispensation from the clerical state was intended to bring the canonical process to an end.
The Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo has just published The Shepherd and the Wolves (Seix Barral, Grupo Planeta), a chronicle of Robert Prevost’s rise to the papacy that the author himself presents as the story of a bishop who stood up to abuse within the Peruvian Church. It is not a book hostile to the Pope: Roncagliolo acknowledges that one of his main sources is journalist Paola Ugaz, a close collaborator of Prevost in the Sodalicio investigation and, alongside Pedro Salinas, one of the voices most energetically defending the Pontiff’s management in public.
It is precisely for this reason that the detail casually dropped in the book, which had not been public until now, is so striking: Edgard Rimaycuna, Leo XIV’s personal secretary, is a disciple of Father Eleuterio Vásquez González, “Lute”, the priest from Chiclayo accused of abusing prepubescent minors, in a case whose investigation under then-Bishop Prevost the Church itself admits was “a farce”. A case that remains open and that the Church is determined not to resolve.
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