Vatican

The Vatican becomes a consequential institutional presence in the investigation when Padre Sarasola, a senior church figure, intervenes in the desecrations at the church in Arizkun. Its authority helps set the inquiry in motion and shapes its demand for discretion; later, Amaia Salazar’s scrutiny of Sarasola and the psychiatric services associated with the University Clinic of Navarra raises a more troubling question about how religious influence, clinical work, and access to vulnerable prisoners may intersect. The novel links the Vatican to these developments through a powerful representative, while leaving the institution’s direct responsibility unproven.

Institutional Presence and Authority

Padre Sarasola is described as a Vatican attaché for the defense of the faith and an influential member of Opus Dei. He is a prelate with substantial standing in Rome, where he had worked for years for the pope identified in the account as John Paul II and served as an adviser to a previous pope when that pope was still a cardinal. Jonan Etxaide explains these credentials to Amaia after the meeting, describing Sarasola’s position in terms that recall an inquisitor, though he notes that the institution no longer favors that label.

The Vatican’s authority is made tangible through procedure. The police commissioner tells Amaia that the meeting was called from the Vatican and that he has little freedom to refuse its demands. Sarasola has specifically asked for her, and the commissioner assigns her the investigation, citing her investigative ability and familiarity with the area. Amaia objects that she does not yet know where to begin and doubts that the case belongs with her team, but the institutional request has already determined her role.

The Arizkun Desecrations

At the meeting, Sarasola presents the attacks as more than damage to church property. He argues that they may express hatred of the Church rooted in a misunderstanding of history, and emphasizes the significance of human bones used in the latest attack. He asks for discretion, citing the risk of public alarm and the distress of parishioners at the Iglesia de San Juan Bautista de Arizkun. The presence of senior police and church authorities, and Sarasola’s apparent command of the discussion even with an archbishop present, show how seriously the matter is being treated.

The bones give that concern a specific religious and folkloric context. Jonan identifies the burned infant bones as a mairu-beso, traditionally understood to come from an unbaptized child who died in infancy. Folklore credited such remains with protective and narcotic powers. The desecration therefore joins damage to a church with the violation of a burial place and the use of a human relic associated with beliefs about baptism, death, and the household. Sarasola treats the human remains as evidence of the case’s complexity; the narrative does not establish that his interpretation is the only possible one.

Historical Grievance and the Church

Jonan’s account of the Agotes supplies the historical grievance that Sarasola says may underlie the attacks. Their origins are disputed: proposed explanations include flight from medieval war, famine, plague, and religious persecution; descent from Cathars; or settlement as an excluded group in the service of a local feudal lord. They became concentrated in Bozate and were kept apart from surrounding society for centuries. Restrictions barred them from living elsewhere, owning businesses, or marrying outside their group, while customary occupations included woodworking and leatherworking.

The Church is implicated in this history through specific practices described by Jonan. Although the Agotes were Christians who observed Catholic rites, they were treated as pariahs: they had a separate baptismal font, and holy water used for them was discarded. They could be made to remain at the back of a church, enter through a smaller separate door, and, in Arizkun, worship behind a barrier separating them from other parishioners. That grille was later removed because of the shame its presence represented to local residents. These details give material form to the conflict between formal religious belonging and enforced exclusion. They describe historical church practices, however, not proof that the contemporary Vatican ordered or supported the desecrations.

From Ecclesiastical Concern to Police Suspicion

The Vatican connection acquires a darker ambiguity when Amaia investigates psychiatric treatment provided to prisoners. She asks Teniente Padua to check whether the prisoner who died by suicide in Logroño had received therapy, and whether Jasón Medina and Ramón Quiralte had undergone psychiatric treatment in prison. Padua reports that the Logroño prisoner spoke with a psychiatrist, but the report gives no name and bears an illegible signature. In Pamplona, both Medina and Quiralte attended therapy through a University Clinic of Navarra program that sent a clinician to the prison.

Amaia later identifies a pattern of what she calls ghost reports: prison documents bearing Sarasola’s signature but no psychiatrist’s name in the assigned-clinician field. A judge observes that prison authorities may have accepted these documents because they appeared to be signed by a head of psychiatry. The missing names and institutional signatures turn routine paperwork into a possible blind spot: records that seem authorized may obscure who actually provided treatment. They raise suspicion, but the gaps in the records do not by themselves establish what happened in each session or who was responsible.

Allegations and Limits of the Connection

Amaia’s suspicion extends from the prison records to the clinic’s case selection. She tells Sarasola that Doctor Franz disagreed with the procedure used to transfer Rosario to the clinic and had said that morning that he intended to resolve matters with him. Sarasola denies knowing about it; Iriarte points out that Franz’s recent calls can be checked. The exchange places Sarasola under scrutiny but does not, in itself, confirm his involvement in the transfer or in Franz’s concerns.

In a later confrontation, Amaia argues that the clinic’s prison volunteer work may not be purely altruistic. She suspects that the head of psychiatry encouraged staff to seek especially violent patients, cases with what she calls an added dimension of evil, and suggests that the search for special patients continued beyond Rosario’s case. She presents this as an accusation and a line of investigation, not as an established finding. Sarasola remains composed, but Amaia perceives that her suggestion that his staff may have acted beyond his control has touched a nerve.

The Vatican’s narrative role thus shifts from distant authority to a source of institutional pressure and a point of inquiry. Its representative helps define the desecrations as a sensitive matter requiring a discreet police response; the later investigation tests whether Sarasola’s religious standing and clinical connections overlap with questionable prison practices. The distinction matters: the evidence supports a powerful Vatican-linked official, disputed or incomplete records, and Amaia’s allegations about the clinic, but it does not demonstrate a Vatican-directed scheme.