Leader of the Sodalitium of Christian Life found guilty of abuse

LIMA (EFE/AP).— The Vatican has expelled the founder of the religious congregation Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana (SVC), Peruvian Luis Fernando Figari Rodrigo, following investigations that found him guilty of having committed abuses, the Peruvian Episcopal Conference reported yesterday.

“The Peruvian Episcopal Conference makes public the Decree issued by the Dicastery for Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life of the Holy See, with which it reports, in accordance with canon 746 of the Code of Canon Law, the expulsion of Mr. Luis Fernando Figari Rodrigo, from the society of apostolic life Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana,” the press office of the institution indicated in a statement.

Figari Rodrigo (1947) founded the congregation in Peru 53 years ago and was accused by members of the congregation and journalistic fiscal investigations of having committed physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

In July 2023, Pope Francis sent two specialists to the Andean country to “investigate, listen to and present a report” on the case of the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana.

The mission was formed by the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, and the Spanish priest Jordi Bertomeu, both members of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and experts in crimes of abuse.

On April 2, the Pope accepted the resignation of the archbishop of Piura, in northern Peru, José Antonio Eguren Anselmi, following accusations of abuse and other irregularities by members of the congregation to which he belongs.

The archbishop had been at the centre of a journalistic investigation in Peru in which he was accused of covering up the abuses of Luis Fernando Figari.

The so-called “Sodalicio Case” was revealed in 2015 by Peruvian journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz, who published the book “Half Monks, Half Soldiers,” which collects the testimonies of victims of physical, psychological and sexual abuse allegedly committed by members of the Sodalicio.

In January 2018, the Vatican announced the intervention of Sodalitium, a month after the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office requested preventive detention for several members and former members of the organization, including its founder, Figari.

In response to the complaints, the Sodalitium stated that an internal investigation group determined that the identified aggressors were Figari, the now deceased Germán Doig, as well as Virgilio Levaggi and Jeffrey Daniels, who were removed from the organization.

That report concluded that at least 36 people, 19 of them minors, were allegedly victims of sexual abuse between 1975 and 2002 by leaders of the organization, although the Prosecutor’s Office filed the complaints of sexual abuse due to the statute of limitations.

Explicit authorization

According to the decree, posted on the website of the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference, Francis gave explicit permission to expel Figari from the movement, even though canon law did not accurately cover his alleged misconduct, AP reports.

Figari’s behavior was “incompatible and therefore unacceptable for a member of a Church institution, as well as causing scandal and serious harm to the good of the Church and of each of the faithful,” the decree states. His expulsion would restore justice damaged by Figari’s behavior “over many years, as well as to protect in the future the individual good of the faithful and of the Church.”

Figari’s expulsion is Francis’ second personal move since Vatican abuse investigators returned from Peru last year.

In April, the Pope accepted the resignation of a member of the movement, the Archbishop of Piura, José Eguren, who had sued Salinas and the journalist Ugaz for their reports on the group.

Speaking to AP, Paola Ugaz described the decision to expel Figari as “of capital importance.”

Target Movement

Luis Fernando Figari founded the Sodalicio in 1971 as a lay community to recruit “soldiers for God.”

Reaction

It was one of several Catholic societies born as a conservative reaction to the leftist Liberation Theology movement that swept through Latin America beginning in 1960.

Apogee

At its peak, the group had some 20,000 members in South America and the United States. Its influence in Peru was enormous.

Book

Figari’s alleged abuse victims complained to the Archdiocese of Lima in 2011, although other complaints against him date back to 2000. But neither the Peruvian church nor the Holy See took concrete measures until 2015, when one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, —along with the journalist Paola Ugaz— wrote a book called “Half monks, half soldiers,” in which he detailed the “practices” of the Sodalicio.

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