Vatican fixer announces full suppression of Peruvian lay movement mired in scandal

ROME – The Vatican official overseeing the suppression a Peru-based lay group plagued by scandal has announced that all four entities belonging to the so-called “spiritual family” must cease their activities.

After over a year of inquiry by the Vatican’s top two investigators, the Pope last month decided to suppress the Peru-based Sodalitium Christiane Vitae (SCV), founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari.

Speaking during a Mass at the SCV-run Our Lady of Reconciliation parish in the neighbourhood of Camacho in Lima, Spanish Mgr Jordi Bertomeu Farnós said that “everything that Figari founded” had been suppressed.

He celebrated the Mass (pictured) alongside SCV priest Fr Juan Carlos Rivva, who in the past has been critical of the Vatican’s inquiry and papal actions taken against SCV members.

The SCV at the conclusion of its Jan. 6-31 general assembly in Aparecida confirmed news of its suppression and announced that Mgr Bertomeu, an official of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) and one of a two-member Special Mission tasked by the pope with investigating the SCV in 2023, would oversee the suppression process.

At the beginning of Sunday’s Mass in Lima, Mgr Bertomeu said that just before Christmas Pope Francis “asked me to accompany him in this process of suppression of the Sodalicio and everything that Figari founded, because he came to the conclusion, after a long discernment, that there was no initial charisma, that Figari did not receive a special grace”.

He insisted the decision was “not a punishment” but the product of a discernment that came at the end of “a very difficult and very complicated special mission”.

“You, with a gaze of faith, accompanied by Peter, have arrived at a point to pick up the pieces and save everything that can be saved,” he said, and stressed the need to maintain the good works and projects of the SCV, while purifying the community of its problematic aspects.

Mgr Bertomeu asked that faithful at the parish, many of whom belong to the various entities Figari founded, assist him in “transmitting this message of the Holy Father at the beginning of this process of the suppression of the Sodalicio and the other entities that the layman Figari founded,” and that they find themselves “more rooted in Christ and accompanied by the Holy Virgin Mary.”

No formal announcement has yet been made about the SCV or the other three entities belonging to the spiritual family.

In addition to the SCV, Figari also founded an ecclesial movement and two women’s communities: the Marian Community of Reconciliation (MCR); a community of women religious, the Servants of the Plan of God; and an ecclesial movement, called the “Christian Life Movement.”

The Pope’s decision to suppress the entire SCV galaxy comes after a papal-ordered Vatican inquiry into the SCV that began in July 2023, when Pope Francis sent his top investigating duo, Bertomeu and Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, on a “special mission” to investigate ongoing allegations of abuse and financial corruption within the organisation.

The Archbishop of Malta is adjunct secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), which handles allegations of clerical abuse. Archbishop Scicluna is also president of a review board for abuse cases within the dicastery.

The investigation began solely as an inquiry into allegations within the SCV, resulting in the expulsion of 15 top-ranking members of the group, including its founder.

The decision to suppress all branches of a spiritual family that share one founder and adhere to one “charisma” is extremely rare.

It potentially sets a new standard for potential future Vatican intervention, as a decision of this magnitude has not been made with other groups accused of similar forms of misconduct, including the Legionaries of Christ and its associated entities after allegations surfaced against their founder, Mexican Father Marcial Maciel Degollado.

A Society of Apostolic Life and the largest ecclesial lay movement in Peru, the SCV was founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in 1971.

Figari stepped down as superior general of the SCV, for health reasons in 2010, though by then scandals involving other members had emerged, and allegations of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse against Figari had already begun to surface in Peru.

A full investigation into the complaints against Figari was not opened until 2015, shortly after Peruvian journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz published their book Half Monks, Half Soldiers, named after one of Figari’s favourite mantras, chronicling years of alleged sexual, physical and psychological abuse by members of the SCV.

(Photo courtesy of Our Lady of Reconciliation parish, via Crux)

The post Vatican fixer announces full suppression of Peruvian lay movement mired in scandal first appeared on Catholic Herald.

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