Pope Francis expels two other members of the Catholic group Sodalicio in Peru

LIMA – Pope Francis announced on Monday the expulsion of two senior members of the Sodalitium of Christian Life in Peru, bringing the total number of those separated to 13, including ten people last month and the group’s lay founder in August. These measures were taken following a Vatican investigation that uncovered serious abuses of power, authority and spiritual manipulation within the religious organization.

A statement from the Apostolic Nunciature in Peru, the Vatican’s diplomatic mission, says the decision was made due to “cases of abuse of office and authority, particularly in the form of abuse in the administration of ecclesiastical property, as well as abuse sexual activity, in some cases even involving minors”.

The document adds that one of those expelled is José Andrés Ambrozic Velezmoro, former vicar general, former assistant for temporalities, communications and apostolate. Another is Luis Antonio Ferroggiaro Dentone, a priest who belongs to the Catholic group.

The expulsion follows that of 10 other members in September that included the former Peruvian archbishop of the Piura and Tumbes regions, José Antonio Eguren, whom Francisco forced to resign in April over his record, after Eguren sued the two Peruvian journalists, Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz, who denounced the abuses of the Sodalicio in reports and books.

In August, Pope Francis also defrocked the group’s founder Luis Fernando Figari Rodrigo, 77, after he was found to have sexually abused his followers.

An external investigation ordered by the Sodalicio determined in 2017 that Figari was “a narcissistic, paranoid, degrading, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist man obsessed with sexual issues and the sexual orientation” of its members. He also discovered that Figari sexually abused his recruits and forced them to caress him and each other.

The victims of Luis Fernando Figari filed complaints with the Archdiocese of Lima in 2011, although the first accusations against him date back to 2000. However, neither the local Church nor the Vatican acted. It was not until 2015, when Pedro Salinas, one of the victims and now a journalist, published the book “Half monks, half soldiers” together with his colleague Paola Ugaz, that the abusive practices of the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana were publicly exposed.

The investigation was carried out by the Vatican’s main sexual crimes investigators, the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who traveled to Lima last year to take testimony of the victims.

Vatican investigators discovered physical abuse “including sadism and violence,” sectarian, spiritual, authority and economic abuses of conscience in the administration of Church money and “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism.”

But according to the findings of the Vatican’s latest investigation, the abuse went beyond Figari, and included harassment and wiretapping of his victims, while covering up crimes committed as part of his official duties.

At the beginning of September, the Peruvian prosecutor’s office closed an investigation opened in 2016 for the crimes of kidnapping, serious mental injuries and illicit association against six members of the Sodalicio, including Luis Figari and two others of those expelled by the Pope, because, according to the tax resolution to which the AP had access, the crimes had prescribed.

There is another tax investigation that began in August 2023 and remains open for alleged money laundering crimes against two members of Sodalicio and a third who is a relative of an important member of the Catholic organization. The prosecution presumes that they use front companies in the Virgin Islands and Panama to hide income from the mining sector, which is denied by Sodalicio.