Pope dissolves Peru-based conservative Catholic movement after abuses uncovered by Vatican

Vatican investigators Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, right, from Spain, and Archbishop Charles Scicluna, from Malta, walk outside of the Nunciatura Apostolica during a break from meeting with people alleged abused by the Catholic lay group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, in Lima, Peru, on July 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

ROME — ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has taken the remarkable step of dissolving a Peruvian-based Catholic movement, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, after years of attempts at reform and a Vatican investigation. The probe uncovered sexual abuses by its founder, financial mismanagement by its leaders and spiritual abuses by its top members.

The Sodalitium on Monday confirmed the dissolution, which was conveyed to an assembly of its members in Aparecida, Brazil this weekend by Francis’ top legal adviser Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda. In revealing the dissolution in a statement, the group lamented that news of Francis’ decision had been leaked by two members attending the assembly, who were “definitively expelled.”

It provided no details, saying only that the “central information” about the dissolution that was reported by Spanish-language site Infovaticana “was true but it contained several inaccuracies.” It didn’t say what the inaccuracies were.

The Vatican has not responded to several requests for comment. Dissolution, or suppression, of a pontifically recognized religious movement is a major undertaking for a pope, all the more so for a Jesuit pope given the Jesuit religious order was itself suppressed in the 1700s.

The SCV dissolution, which had been rumored, marks a final end to what has amounted to a slow death of the movement, which was founded in 1971 as one of several Catholic societies born as a conservative reaction to the left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept through Latin America in the 1960s.

At its height, the group counted about 20,000 members across South America and the United States. It was enormously influential in Peru and has its U.S. base in Denver.

But former members complained to the Lima archdiocese in 2011 about abuses by its founder, Luis Figari, and other claims date to 2000. But neither the local church nor the Holy See took concrete action until one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, wrote a book along with journalist Paola Ugaz detailing the twisted practices of the Sodalitium in 2015, entitled “Half Monks, Half Soldiers.”

In 2017, a report commissioned by the group’s leadership determined that Figari sodomized his recruits and subjected them to humiliating psychological and other sexual abuses.

After an attempt at reform, Francis sent his two most trusted investigators, Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, to look into the Sodalitium abuses. Their report uncovered “sadistic” sect-like abuses of power, authority and spirituality, economic abuses in administering church money and even journalistic abuses of harassing critics.

Their report resulted in the expulsions last year of Figari and 10 top members, including an archbishop who had sued Salinas and Ugaz for their reporting and was forced to retire early.

Salinas, who has long called for the SCV to be suppressed, said word of Francis' decree was “extraordinary” albeit belated since the first denunciations date from 25 years ago. He praised Scicluna and Bertomeu, as well as the new prefect of the Vatican’s office for religious orders, Sister Simona Brambilla, since she is ultimately responsible for the SCV.

“And of course without the personal commitment of Pope Francis in this long history of impunity, nothing would have happened,” Salinas said, identifying complicit Peruvian institutions and bishops who “preferred to look the other way instead of accompanying the Argentine pontiff in his struggle for a Catholic Church without abuse.”

It remains unknown what will become of the assets of the Sodalitium, which victims want to be used as compensation for their trauma. According to the code of canon law, only the Holy See can suppress an institute such as the SCV and “a decision regarding the temporal goods of the institute is also reserved to the Apostolic See.”

Renzo Orbegozo of Grapevine, Texas, a victim of the movement, welcomed the dissolution of the group to which he belonged from 1995-2008 and said he hoped current members will realize the deception they have been living with.

“The Sodalitium is really a social scourge disguised as a Catholic association,” he said. “With time the current Sodalits will understand this, they will realize that they were only a number and not a real concern of the sect.”

His comments echoed those of the current archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio, who in a recent essay called the group a “failed experiment” of the church in Latin America and urged its suppression.

“My hypothesis is that the Sodalitium obeys a political project,” Castillo wrote in El País. “It is the resurrection of fascism in Latin America, artfully using the church by means of sectarian methods.”

Francis' willingness to suppress the movement outright contrasts with the decision taken by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, when faced with another powerful and wealthy Latin American conservative order, the Legionaries of Christ.

Faced with similar evidence of depravity by its founder and a lack of a founding spirit, or charism, underpinning the Legion, Benedict decided instead in 2010 on a path of renewal, overriding calls for the Legion to be suppressed.

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Nicole Winfield and Franklin Briceño, The Associated Press