Pope expels bishop and nine others from Peruvian movement for ‘sadistic’ attacks

Pope Francis made the unusual decision on Wednesday to expel 10 people – a bishop, priests and lay people – from a problematic Catholic movement in Peru after a Vatican investigation uncovered “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality.

The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (Sodalitium of Christian Life) followed Francis’ decision last month to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, after it emerged that he had sodomized his recruits.

This was announced by the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference, which published on its website a statement from the Vatican embassy attributing the expulsions to a “special” decision by Francis.

The statement was astonishing because it listed abuses uncovered by the Vatican investigation that were rarely or never punished under canon law – such as hacking of communications data – and named the people the pope said were responsible.

According to the statement, Vatican investigators uncovered physical abuse “including sadism and violence,” cult-like abuses of conscience, spiritual abuse, abuse of power, economic abuse in the management of church funds and “abuse in the exercise of the journalistic apostolate.”

The latter was allegedly directed against a Sodalitium journalist who had attacked critics of the movement on social media.

Figari founded the SCV, as it is known, in 1971 as a lay community to recruit “soldiers for God.” It is one of several Catholic societies that emerged as a conservative response to the left-wing liberation theology movement that swept Latin America in the 1960s. At its peak, the SCV had about 20,000 members in South America and the United States. It was hugely influential in Peru.

Victims of Figari’s abuses complained to the Archdiocese of Lima in 2011, although other allegations against him reportedly date back to 2000. But neither the local Church nor the Holy See took concrete action until one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, co-wrote a book with journalist Paola Ugaz in 2015, entitled Half Monks, Half Soldiers, detailing the Sodalitium’s perverse practices.

An external investigation commissioned by Sodalitium later found that Figari was “narcissistic, paranoid, degrading, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist and obsessed with sexual issues and the sexual orientation” of Sodalitium members.

The investigation, published in 2017, found that Figari anally abused his recruits and forced them to grope him and each other. He enjoyed watching them “experience pain, discomfort and fear” and humiliated them in front of others to reinforce his control over them, the report said.

Nevertheless, in 2017 the Holy See refused to expel Figari from the movement, ordering only that he live separately from the Sodalitium community in Rome and cut off all contact with it. The Vatican was apparently troubled by canon law, which did not provide for such punishments for founders of religious communities who were not priests. The victims were outraged.

But according to the findings of the Vatican’s recent investigation, the abuses went beyond Figari. They also affected Sodalitium clergy and included harassment and hacking of their victims’ communications while covering up crimes they committed in the course of their official duties, the statement said.

The investigation was carried out by the Vatican’s leading sex crimes investigators, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who traveled to Lima last year to collect victims’ testimonies.

The highest-ranking bishop ordered to be expelled was Archbishop José Antonio Eguren, whom Francis had already forced to resign as bishop of Piura in April because of his past after suing Salinas and Ugaz over their reporting.

In addition to Figari’s own abuses, their research had also uncovered the alleged forced eviction of peasants from lands in the diocese of Eguren by a real estate developer linked to Sodalitium.

Journalist Ugaz welcomed the expulsions and said the reference to the Sodalitium hack was about her: she said her communications were hacked in 2023 after she reported on Sodalitium’s offshore holdings and other financial dealings, and said she believed the group was trying to identify its sources.

“It is proof that the survivors in Peru would never have received justice and reparations. [without Bertomeo and Scicluna] because Sodalitium is an organization with great political, social and economic power,” she said in a statement to the Associated Press.

For his part, Salinas reiterated that the group must be completely disbanded and that some key figures were not on the list.

“This is very good news after 24 years of impunity,” he said in a message to AP. “It is hoped that this historic and memorable news is only the first of more, perhaps even more devastating than what we know today.”

The publication of such detailed information by the Vatican is highly unusual for an institution that is better known for its secrecy, lack of transparency and turning a blind eye to even obvious crimes committed by the Church.

It is unclear exactly how the exclusions will be enforced or what they will mean in practice, especially for the lay people affected. But at least the very public announcement suggests that, at least with this particular group, Francis was willing to take an unorthodox approach to interpreting the Church’s internal laws in order to make a statement.

“In deciding on such a disciplinary measure, account was taken of the scandal created by the number and gravity of the abuses denounced by the victims, which are in particular contradiction with the balanced and liberating experience of the evangelical councils,” says the Vatican embassy’s statement justifying the punishments.

The Vatican statement said Peruvian bishops had joined Francis’s request for “forgiveness of the victims” and called on the troubled movement to embark on a path of justice and reparation.

There was no immediate response to a request for comment from Sodalitium.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.