Vatican official performs Pachamama ritual ahead of Pope Leo’s Peru visit

CUSCO, Peru (LifeSiteNews) — Last week a senior Vatican official participated in a Pachamama ritual alongside two Catholic bishops.

The ritual took place on August 13 at a conference in Cusco, a Peruvian city in the Andean mountains, promoted by the Catholic Church. The event anticipated Pope Leo XIV’s planned visit to the country.

According to Spanish news outlet InfoVaticana the conference opened with an Andean ritual dedicated to Pachamama, involving coca leaves, food offerings, and guided breathing exercises. Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, a priest and canon lawyer who serves in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and as papal commissioner for clerical sexual abuse cases, took an active part. Video shared with InfoVatican show him placing coca leaves among the ritual offerings. Bishop Lizardo Estrada Herrera, secretary general of CELAM (Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council) and Bishop Miguel Ángel Cadenas of Iquitos, Peru, were also in attendance.

“This month of August is very special for us, for the Andean worldview; it is the month of Mother Earth, who loves us so much, who is so caring, who is so generous, who gives us food,” a woman leading the opening ceremony told participants.

El obispo auxiliar de Cusco Lizardo Estrada y el comisario pontificio Jordi Bertomeu (segundo 50) depositan hojas de coca en un “pago a la tierra” en un evento que Vatican News enmarcó como “preparatorio para la próxima visita a Perú de León XIV”. https://t.co/q0EjOife5M pic.twitter.com/3r6agsruSy

— InfoVaticana (@Infovaticana) August 18, 2026

According to Vatican News, the event, entitled “Weaving Voices for Dignity: For Human Rights and the Common Good,” brought together Catholic leadership in the region with “representatives of social organizations, Indigenous peoples and communities, grassroots groups, and human rights defenders from nine regions of southern Peru.” The report states that the purpose of the meeting was to provide “a space to share experiences from different territories, identify common challenges, and develop proposals in response to the main human rights issues facing the country.”

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The ceremony involved distributing coca leaves to attendees and then guided breathing exercises. Participants were instructed to close their eyes and reflect on their interior state before placing the leaves in bowls arranged on an altar on the ground. “We are seeing how our interior is,” the woman said. “This body, this body that we inhabit is land, it is territory.… We thank the earth in this important month: we give her three breaths when we deposit the [coca leaves].” Food, too, was presented as an offering to the earth.

The bishops are offscreen for the video of the offerings. However, the available images clearly show them participating in the offering rather than merely observing it. Bishop Estrada, the auxiliary bishop of Cusco, offered his cocoa leaf just before the Vatican official did.

InfoVaticana reported that no Catholic prayer, blessing, or invocation appears in the recorded opening ceremony.

The ceremony was followed by the meeting’s formal program. Bertomeu told the gathering about his investigation into allegations of systematic sexual abuse and corruption in Peru within the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana group. It had led to the dissolution of the organization. InfoVaticana also reported that, after his speech, Bertomeu turned over his name card and left the camera frame.

The meeting was formally presented as a Church-supported initiative concerning human dignity and the common good.

“The initiative is […] being developed as part of the preparation path for the upcoming visit of Pope Leo XIV to Peru, generating a meeting space between the Church, social organizations, human rights defenders and representatives of different territories to collect their voices and strengthen commitments in favor of human dignity and the common good,” the Vatican News report reads.

The official Vatican account mentioned neither the ritual offering to “Mother Earth” nor Bertomeu’s participation.

Bertomeu drew criticism for concentrating power and allegedly bypassing canonical procedures amid his investigation into the Sodalicio case. This included allegations that he procured an excommunication decree, later revoked, from Pope Francis against journalists who denounced him.

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Leo XIV’s connection to the Sodalicio case dates back to his years in Peru, long before his election as Pope. He personally asked Bertomeu to complete the suppression of the organization within a few hours after his election as Pope. While confirming the decision to dissolve the group, Leo XIV emphasized justice for victims and institutional transparency, but remained silent on the controversies regarding Bertomeu’s conduct.

In 1995, while still an Augustinian priest, then-Father Robert Prevost participated in an official theological symposium in São Paulo, Brazil, whose program included a Pachamama “Mother Earth” ritual. The photos unearthed by LifeSiteNews show him kneeling among the participants during the ceremony.