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.
At its height, the group counted about 20,000 members across South America and the United States. It was enormously influential in Peru.
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 earlier forced to retire early.
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Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
