The priest Eleuterio Vásquez, known in Chiclayo as “Lute” and denounced by three victims for serious abuses against minors - to whom he took alone to spend the night at a ranch in the mountains - has reappeared publicly last week at a parish celebration accompanied by the priest Edward Tocto, a canonist close to Prevost who also acted as his defense lawyer in the controversial failed canonical process regarding the abuses in Chiclayo.
The scene, in which both appear on March 8 last celebrating with the faithful the anniversary of parish activities, has caused bewilderment among many Catholics who know the seriousness of the case and the way in which the ecclesiastical processing ended, with the dispensation from the clerical state granted last October and without a sentence on the merits of the facts.
The «Lute» Method
Eleuterio Vásquez was denounced for seriously improper behavior with minors.
The victims’ testimonies describe trips to the mountains with girls between nine and eleven years old, with whom the priest spent the night alone while a driver remained outside, sleeping in the vehicle that had transported them.
The statements that the victims submitted in 2022 to the then Bishop Prevost recount episodes in which the priest undressed in front of the minors and performed sexual rubbings, facts that became public when the complainants, after years of institutional silence, went to the Peruvian media.
The precautionary measures taken by the then Bishop Prevost against Lute, as confirmed by Infovaticana through a recording of the instructor Giampiero Gambaro, never included the suspension of the abuser from public ministry, but only his transfer and a prohibition on hearing confessions.
The lack of investigations: the driver who took the victims and their abuser to the mountains was not even identified, and a strange request to archive the case linking it to the civil prescription of the same, place the Lute case as an unresolved blot on Prevost’s trajectory prior to the papacy.
A Canonical Process Marked by Irregularities
The ecclesiastical procedure that followed the complaints was surrounded from the beginning by controversial decisions.
At first, the file was archived invoking the civil prescription of the facts, a decision contrary to the logic of the canonical order itself and which was later exposed when the serious deficiencies of the preliminary investigation became known, described by the instructor himself as «a sham, superficial and riddled with errors.»
Later the procedure was reopened, but for years it remained practically paralyzed. The victims denounced a total blockade of information, without access to the file and without knowing the real status of the case.
That situation was reflected when they formally requested to see the documents that the Church had been withholding from them for years.
To this day, the case continues to leave the complainants without a minimally reparative response.
During the investigation, another particularly disturbing element also came to light: the priest himself admitted to abusive conduct, although he tried to downplay its severity by claiming there was no penetration.
That statement was recorded in the information published by this medium under the title “Lute admitted to abusing girls but does not consider it a crime because there was no penetration”.
The Dispensation That Closed the Process Without Trial
The most delicate episode came when Leo XIV granted the grace of dispensation from the clerical state requested by Eleuterio Vásquez himself.
With that decision, the canonical penal process was extinguished without a trial being held or a sentence being issued on the denounced facts.
Before that measure was adopted, the victims had expressly asked the Pope not to grant the dispensation until the case concluded, a request recorded when they publicly requested that the canonical trial be allowed to continue.
Finally, the dispensation was granted, attempting to leave the case without judicial resolution, as explained by Infovaticana in the information about the decision adopted in Rome that closed the procedure.
Edward Tocto, the Central Link in the Case
Lute’s public reappearance alongside Edward Tocto is not a secondary detail. It is, in fact, the axis of the news.
Tocto was not only the canonist who took on the defense of Eleuterio Vásquez in the ecclesiastical process.
Tocto is also part of Robert Francis Prevost’s personal circle from the years in Chiclayo and maintains an evident closeness with him, accredited by concrete facts and by the priest’s own public testimonies.
The image disseminated on social networks last week is therefore particularly significant: it shows Eleuterio Vásquez’s canonical defender in public celebration alongside the denounced priest himself, in a festive atmosphere and surrounded by the faithful, as if nothing that happened had existed.
It is not just an uncomfortable photograph.
It is the visualization of a network of personal and ecclesiastical ties that runs through the case from beginning to end.
The situation is even more serious due to the institutional position that Edward Tocto holds within the Diocese of Chiclayo.
Tocto is currently deputy judicial vicar of the diocesan ecclesiastical tribunal.
That condition is incompatible with his role as defender in the process against Eleuterio Vásquez, because the judicial vicar and his deputies are part of the very structure in charge of administering justice in the diocese.
That dual position contaminates the cleanliness of the procedure and aggravates the sense of disorder that already surrounded the entire case.
A Close Friendship with the Current Pope
The relationship between Edward Tocto and Robert Francis Prevost is not tangential or protocolary. It is a close, longstanding friendship known in the Chiclayo circle. Tocto himself has recounted it publicly.
After the conclave, he recalled on the Spanish radio network COPE an episode that occurred in Rome on the occasion of Prevost’s creation as a cardinal.
According to his account, he arrived at night without lodging and ended up meeting the then cardinal near the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square.
Tocto said that Prevost recognized him immediately, hugged him, inquired about his situation, and got him a place to sleep that same night.
But there is an even more expressive fact about that closeness.
In February 2015, when Prevost was bishop of Chiclayo, he personally drove from Madrid to Pamplona to visit Tocto, who at that time was studying Canon Law at the University of Navarra.
He made the round trip in the same day - nearly eight hundred kilometers- just to wish him a happy birthday, spend a few hours with him, and then return to Madrid.
This is not a distant relationship between bishop and priest. It is an intense, sustained, and singularly close personal friendship.
That fact is key to understanding the photograph now circulating in Chiclayo. Tocto does not appear next to Lute as an ordinary priest.
He appears as the canonical defender of the denounced priest and, at the same time, as a person very close to the current pontiff.
And that same Tocto is, moreover, a figure known for his closeness to both Prevost and Lute’s own circle.
There lies the true center of gravity of the news: Eleuterio Vásquez’s public reappearance takes place hand in hand with a priest who connects the case to the diocese’s judicial structure and to the Pope’s personal circle.
This image does not just reopen a poorly closed wound.
It also reopens a fundamental question about how the case was managed from the beginning, who was close to whom in each phase of the procedure, and why an abusive priest with such solid testimonies and an overwhelming context ends up reappearing publicly accompanied precisely by one of the men closest to the current Pope within the Diocese of Chiclayo.
The Procedural Situation of the Lute Case
The victims demand access to the file
The victims of the Lute case demand to see the documents that the Church has been hiding from them since 2022
The evidence that was never gathered
The evidence that Prevost did not gather and that the victims demand to clarify their case
The deficiencies of the preliminary investigation
The Church admitted negligence in the Lute case
The priest’s own admission of abuses
Lute admitted to abusing girls but does not consider it a crime