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When on May 8, 2025, American Cardinal Robert Prevost emerged on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica as Pope Leo XIV, he was unknown to the general public, even to many in Peru, where he spent a good part of his priestly life.
That day, the Peruvian journalist Santiago Roncagliolo, who admitted that until that moment he did not have "the remotest idea" who the new head of the Catholic Church was, was commissioned to write a book about him.
"The only thing I knew was that he had been a missionary," he confessed.
However, he took on the assignment because "he considered that he could contribute something different than a correspondent in the Vatican."
"If there was a story, I could tell it, at least I could tell a part that the mainstream media is not telling," he added.
The result is "The Shepherd and the Wolves", a book that is the result of more than a year of research. To write it, Roncagliolo traveled to the areas 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 the biography of a religious man, and is intertwined with the author's own childhood and youth.
The writer of "The Accident", "And Deliver Us From Evil" and "The Maximum Penalty" spoke with BBC Mundo before his participation in the Arequipa Hay Festival, which was held from November 5 to 8, and a few days before Leo XIV visits Peru from this Wednesday until November 16.
Image source, Courtesy Santiago Roncagliolo
This book contains two biographies at the same time, not only that of the Pope, but also his. Why did you decide to focus this work like this?
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Well, I had to explain why the Pope exists. Why is it important? Why do 1.4 billion people listen to someone who doesn't tax them, who doesn't have an army, who doesn't have direct authority? And the only way to explain it was to go back to my own experience, when I was a child with a Catholic education who suffered violence within his family, who suffered violence in the country and how that faith became a shield against fear, against pain and a source of meaning for a completely lost adolescent, as I was.
The offer of a father, which is what the Catholic Church offers, is very attractive for people who had violent, difficult relationships with our paternal models.
Why this particular Pope? Was it simply because he had been a missionary in Peru and then bishop of Chiclayo?
In this case, it caught my attention that this Pope who is trained in liberation theology in Peru has an approach to Christianity like the one I had grown up with. A theory that highlights that God, that Christ was not an emperor or a rich man, but was the son of a carpenter, who was persecuted by an empire, who was a refugee, was tortured and finally killed. More like guerrillas than popes.
In that sense, this story had to do with what I myself had learned was God 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 rather grew up with priests who were quite subversive. Telling that seemed quite interesting to me.
"The Shepherd and the Wolves" leaves a double image of Leo XIV. On the one hand, that of a religious 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 agent of the Vatican sent to purge the Church of priests involved in abuse, corruption and even links with hitmen. Did you expect those two facets of this man?
No, my main concern was that there might not be any story. I could meet a priest who spent every Sunday giving homilies and who perhaps had done nothing in his life and became Pope for bureaucratic reasons.
It was very shocking 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 became a personal question to know if it is really possible to believe that someone is good.
image copyrightVatican Pool/Getty Images
You make clear that then-Bishop Prevost played a key role in the Vatican's decision to dissolve the Sodalitium of Christian Life, an ultraconservative organization accused of perpetrating sexual and other abuses. However, he was also accused of covering up for a priest who was close to him: Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles, also known as Father Lute, who was accused of abusing several girls.
What appeared 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 hitmen.
He is a man who has to manage the darkness within a Church, which has a lot of darkness, because it is very opaque, and who was capable of doing that without creating wars.
I think that's what Francisco appreciated about him. That is the reason why Francisco chose him. Francisco wanted to fight against those things, but every time he opened his mouth he caused a schism. And on the other hand, this subtle and silent Florentine politician could be much more efficient in dealing with these things.
I was surprised to find a story much more similar to a thriller than the story one usually thinks a Pope has.
He said he wanted to believe that Prevost is good. What do you think today after finishing your research?
I think he is a good man who has dedicated his life to serving others, but he is not a character in a superhero movie.
In life you have to choose between what there is, between what you can do and what you can't, and there will always be victims, as happened in this case.
Good people do not spend all day doing good things against men who are doing bad things.
If it were that simple, then 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 have seen the best and the worst of human beings.
I have seen 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 those people who work and sacrifice their sexual and family lives to help the poorest.
Prevost comes from there, he is one of them and I think he is undoubtedly a good man, but let's say, there is a phrase from one of the sources that I really like and I think it sums up everything I think about him: 'The allies of the light cannot be more naive than the allies of the darkness.'
Image source, Courtesy Grupo Planeta
In his book he was not able to clarify whether he covered up one of the cases of abuse that he knew about, but the truth is that Father Lute was not investigated by the Church, but was transferred to another parish and then resigned. Do you think then-Bishop Prevost acted correctly or failed?
When I have discussed with sources close to him about how the case of this alleged abuser (Father Lute) was handled. The response has been: '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 doing it any other way would have called into question all the other investigations that Prevost was carrying out, all these investigations of abuses and crimes that we mentioned before, and this accusation by the mere fact of being opened and prolonged would have made him a suspect, ruining the other cases.
I don't know if there was another way out, like the ones in superhero movies. I don't know if there was a perfect solution.
Peru is one of the three countries that Leo XIV visits on his first Latin American tour. What do you expect from this trip?
The issue 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 more attention was paid to them, but there were still protests.
I thought that, on the agenda in Peru, where he knows 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 is about managing the past, not the abuses that are happening, for which there are already protocols, but the pain that has already been caused.
It seems that this visit will be dedicated to bringing hope to a people in great need and showing the images of massive devotion that it will surely have, because it is very loved.
It doesn't seem like he's going to deal with social issues, perhaps because there is a Fujimori [Keiko] in the government and he was very critical of Fujimori's father [Alberto].
Do you think that without his time in Peru, Prevost would have ended up on the throne of San Pedro?
I wouldn't have arrived.
His journey to the Vatican, which is a place where he never expected to be and never did anything to be, 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 defended him in public. And then the Chilean population becomes angry, abandons masses and public events, burns churches and the international press covers the disaster that has been the trip to Chile.
Francisco, then, understands that we must change our attitude, that we cannot continue pretending that the abuses are not happening.
At that time, right in the north of Peru, the case of the Sodálites [del Sodalicio] was beginning to explode and he commissioned the bishop of Chiclayo to take care of the matter and also commissioned him to manage another diocese, where the bishop had ties to hitman mafias.
Francis begins to see that Prevost is capable of managing these things, but since he believes that his problem was that he did not know the curia before becoming Pope, he takes him to the Dicastery of Bishops, which is the body where all those who will later vote in a conclave will know him.
Francisco very clearly conveys his desire for him to be his successor. All of this would not have happened, to begin with, without his work with the Sodalites, showing how he could resolve these things without creating internal battles.
More than a year after his election, can Leo
Leo XIV must be Francis' successor, as he usually is. After John XXIII came Paul VI, after John Paul II came Benedict XVI, popes who consolidate what can be consolidated from the legacy of the previous one, but smooth the edges and try to close the wounds.
The thing is that there has been a very long war since the Vatican Council between two sides. Francis represents one and John Paul II represented the other, but in that war sexual abuse has become a weapon and that is suicidal.
Until not many years ago, the procedure was to cover up, so all (religious leaders) of a certain age and a certain power have covered up a case, because that was what the norm told them to do.
And in general, the battle within the Church is conceptually absurd to the extent that God does not have a party. So, León's mission is not to win this war, it is to end it; is to close those wounds.
For example, a very important measure of his is to appoint a lay woman as prefect of the Dicastery of Communication for the first time in history, but she is ultra-conservative. These are the filigrees that Francisco did not conceive, but that León does understand.
It allows more traditional rites to be celebrated, but it has excommunicated the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius
He gives messages that he is a man of dialogue, but makes it clear that as soon as he perceives that the dialogue is going nowhere, his pulse does not tremble to act.
image copyrightFotoholica Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
If you had the chance to interview Pope Leo XIV, what would you ask him?
Let's see, what happens is that the Pope is not going to talk about the issues that interest me most.
Having already written the book, and I am sure that you are not going to answer me with useful information for this investigation, I would really ask you: what can I do to make the world a little better than this disaster?
It sounds 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 the war, the bombing of innocents, the persecution of people because of their skin color, and the one who speaks of human dignity and respecting human beings and saving suffering is the Pope.
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