Credit, Vatican Pool/Getty Images
When, on May 8, 2025, American Cardinal Robert Prevost stepped out onto the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica as Pope Leo the 14th, he was unknown to the general public, including many in Peru, where he spent much of his priestly life.
That day, Peruvian journalist Santiago Roncagliolo, who admitted that until that moment he had "not the slightest idea" who the new head of the Catholic Church was, was given the task of writing a book about him.
"The only thing I knew was that he had been a missionary," he confessed.
Still, he accepted the task because "he considered he could offer something different from a Vatican correspondent."
"If there was a story, I could tell it, at least I could tell a part that the big media outlets aren't telling," he added.
The result is El pastor y los lobos (The Shepherd and the Wolves, in literal translation), a book that is the result of more than a year of research, which was published in Spanish (not yet published in Portuguese).
To write it, Roncagliolo traveled to the regions of Peru where Prevost carried out his pastoral work and interviewed dozens of people who knew him. The work is more like a police thriller than a biography of a religious man and is intertwined with the author's own childhood and youth.
The author of El accidente, Y líbranos del mal and La pena maxima spoke with BBC News Mundo before his participation in the Hay Festival in Arequipa, held from November 5th to 8th, and a few days before Leão 14's visit to Peru.
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Credit, Courtesy Santiago Roncagliolo
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BBC News Mundo - This book contains two biographies at the same time, not just the pope's, but also yours. Why did you decide to approach this work this way?
Santiago Roncagliolo - Well, I needed to explain why the pope exists. Why is it important? Why do 1.4 billion people listen to someone who doesn't charge them taxes, who doesn't have an Army, who doesn't have direct authority? And the only way to explain this was to draw on my own experience, when I was a child with a Catholic education who suffered violence within my family, who suffered violence in the country, and how this faith became a shield against fear, against pain and a source of meaning for a completely lost teenager, like I was.
The offer of a father, which is what the Catholic Church offers, is very attractive to people who have had violent, difficult relationships with our father figures.
BBC News Mundo - Why this particular pope? Was it simply because he had been a missionary in Peru and then bishop of Chiclayo?
Roncagliolo - In this case, it caught my attention that this pope, who trained in liberation theology in Peru, has an approach to Christianity similar to the one I had grown up with. A theory that highlights that God, that Christ was neither an emperor nor a rich man, but the son of a carpenter, who was persecuted by an empire, who was a refugee, was tortured and finally murdered. More like guerrillas than popes.
In this sense, this story had to do with what I myself had learned about who God was, and it seemed to me that there was a story, because, in countries like Spain, where I live, many people associate the Church with Francoism, and I, on the other hand, grew up with priests who were quite subversive. Telling this seemed quite interesting to me.
BBC News Mundo - El pastor y los lobos presents a double image of Leo 14. On the one hand, that of a religious man who seeks to bring the Church closer to the faithful and who is concerned about their material conditions. On the other, that of a kind of special Vatican agent sent to rid the Church of priests involved in abuse, corruption and even links with hired killers. Did you expect to find these two sides of this man?
Roncagliolo - No, my main concern was that there might be no story at all. I could find a priest who spent every Sunday giving homilies and who perhaps had done nothing in his life and had become pope for bureaucratic reasons.
It was very impactful to find this story and then investigate the case in which he is accused of a cover-up, because, at that point in the investigation, I wanted to believe him.
I wanted him to be good. In a world as cynical and sinister as the one we live in, it has become a personal question to know whether it is really possible to believe that someone is good.
Credit, Raul Sifuentes/Getty Images
BBC News Mundo - You make it clear that the then Bishop Prevost played a fundamental role in the Vatican's decision to dissolve the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiano, an ultra-conservative organization accused of committing sexual and other abuses. However, he was also accused of covering up for a priest close to him: Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles, also known as Father Lute, accused of abusing several girls.
Roncagliolo - What emerged in the story was that he is a man who worked with the sins of the Church, with sexual abuse, with financial crimes, even with priests who hired hired killers.
He is a man who needs to deal with the darkness within a Church that has a lot of darkness, because it is very opaque, and who was capable of doing this without creating wars.
I think that's what Francisco appreciated about him. That's why Francis chose him. Francis wanted to fight against these things, but every time he opened his mouth, he provoked a schism. This Florentine politician, subtle and silent, could be much more efficient in dealing with these things.
I was surprised to find a story much more like a thriller than the story one usually imagines a pope to have.
BBC News Mundo - You said you wanted to believe that Prevost is good. What do you think today, after completing your investigation?
Roncagliolo - I think he's a good man, who dedicated his life to serving others, but he's not a character from a superhero movie.
In life, you need to choose between what exists, between what you can do and what you cannot, and there will always be victims, as happened in this case.
Good people don't spend the whole day doing good things against guys who are doing bad things.
If it were that simple, life would be a Marvel movie. This moral complexity is what forces us to recognize that we are imperfect and, therefore, to forgive and ask for forgiveness.
In this story, I saw the best and worst of human beings.
I saw men who take advantage of children and destroy their lives to do something they could do for free with an adult, but also missionaries, lay people and all these people who work and sacrifice their sexual and family lives to help the poorest.
Prevost comes from that background, he's one of them, and I think, without a doubt, he's a good man. But let's say, there's a quote from one of the sources that I really like and that I think sums up everything I think about him: "The allies of light cannot be more naive than the allies of darkness."
Credit, Courtesy Grupo Planeta
BBC News Mundo - In your book, you were unable to clarify whether he covered up one of the cases of abuse he became aware of, but the fact is that Father Lute was not investigated by the Church, but rather transferred to another parish, and later resigned. Do you think that then Bishop Prevost acted correctly or failed?
Roncagliolo - When I discussed with sources close to him about how the case of this alleged abuser, Father Lute, was handled, the response was: "Well, but Father Lute is no longer in the Church. We want the abusers to leave, and this one left."
And the truth is that it was not very orthodox, but to do it any other way would have called into question all the other investigations that Prevost was conducting, all these abuse and crime investigations that we mentioned before. And this accusation, simply because it was open and prolonged, would have made him a suspect, ruining the other cases.
I don't know if there was another way out, like superhero movies. I don't know if there was a perfect solution.
BBC News Mundo - Peru is one of the three countries that Leo 14 visits on his first trip to Latin America. What do you expect from this trip?
Roncagliolo - The topic of sexual abuse is, surprisingly, its weak point.
On his trip to Spain, there were complaints from many victims, who did not feel heard. In France, less so, because he devoted more attention to them, but there were still protests.
I thought that, on Peru's agenda, where he meets the victims personally, there would be some gesture. But I don't see anything about it and I understand that it must be very difficult, because now it's about dealing with the past, not with the abuse that is taking place, for which there are already protocols, but with the pain that has already been caused.
It seems that this visit will be dedicated to bringing hope to a very needy people and showing the images of mass devotion that he will certainly have, because he is very loved.
It doesn't seem like he's going to deal with social issues, perhaps because there's a Fujimori [Keiko] in the government, and he was very critical of her father [Alberto].
BBC News Mundo - Do you believe that, without his time in Peru, Prevost would have reached the throne of Saint Peter?
Roncagliolo - It wouldn't have arrived.
His journey towards the Vatican, a place he never expected to be and where he never did anything to go, begins in 2018.
That year, Pope Francis makes a trip to Chile that is a disaster. He had just appointed a bishop (Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid) linked to a sexual abuse scandal and defends him in public. Then, the Chilean population became furious, abandoned masses and public events, burned churches, and the international press covered the disaster that was the trip to Chile.
Francisco, then, understands that it is necessary to change attitudes, that they cannot continue pretending that the abuses are not happening.
At that moment, precisely in the north of Peru, the case of the Sodalício members began to explode, and he instructed the bishop of Chiclayo to take care of the matter. It also tasks him with administering another diocese, where the bishop has ties to hitman mafias.
Francis begins to realize that Prevost is capable of dealing with these things, but, as he believes his own problem was not knowing the Curia before becoming pope, he takes Prevost to the Dicastery for Bishops, which is the body where he will be known by all who will later vote in a conclave.
Francisco conveys very clearly his desire for him to be his successor. None of this would have happened, to begin with, without his work with the Sodalium members, showing how he could resolve these things without creating internal battles.
BBC News Mundo - More than a year after his election, is it possible to consider Leo 14 a continuation of Francisco's work, when he resumed the use of the Apostolic Palace and Castel Gandolfo, allowed rites in Latin and reduced the emphasis on themes related to the LGBT community?
Roncagliolo - Leo 14 should be Francisco's successor, as is often the case. After John 23 came Paul 6; after John Paul 2 came Benedict 16. Popes who consolidate what is possible to consolidate from the legacy of the previous one, but trim the edges and try to close the wounds.
What happens is that there has been a very long war, since the Vatican Council, between two sides. Francis represents one, and John Paul 2 represented the other, but in this war, sexual abuse has become a weapon, and that is suicidal.
Until not many years ago, the procedure was to cover up, so everyone [religious leaders] of a certain age and a certain power covered up some case, because that was what the norm told them to do.
And in general, the battle within the Church is conceptually absurd, insofar as God does not have a party. So, Leo's mission is not to win this war, it is to end it; is to close these wounds.
For example, a very characteristic measure of his is to appoint a lay woman as prefect of the Dicastery for Communication for the first time in history, but she is ultra-conservative. These are the subtleties that Francisco did not understand, but that Leo understands.
He allows the celebration of more traditional rites, but he excommunicated the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius 10. He is in dialogue with Opus Dei, but this year he took a photo with the journalist who wrote the harshest book against Opus Dei, Gareth Gore.
He conveys signs that he is a man open to dialogue, but makes it clear that, as soon as he realizes that dialogue leads nowhere, he does not hesitate to act.
Credit, Fotoholica Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
BBC News Mundo - If you had the possibility of interviewing Pope Leo the 14th, what would you ask him?
Roncagliolo - See, what happens is that the Pope won't talk about the topics that interest me most.
With the book already written, and certain that it will not provide me with useful information for this investigation, I would really ask: what can I do to make the world a little better than this disaster?
It seems strange, but a few years ago, democracies, the leaders of democracies, were the ones who talked about human rights, respect for all people and peace.
Today, on the other hand, the leaders of democracy praise war, the bombing of innocent people, the persecution of people because of the color of their skin, and the person who talks about human dignity, respecting human beings and avoiding suffering is the Pope.
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