Capping a decade-long probe, Vatican expels founder from scandal-plagued movement

ROME – Capping a decade-long cycle of accusations and investigations, Peru’s bishops announced Wednesday that layman Luis Fernando Figari, founder of a scandal-plagued movement called the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, has been expelled from the group over charges of abuse.

In their Aug. 14 announcement, the Peruvian bishops said, “Through a press release, 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 informs, 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.”

Signed by Pope Francis Aug. 6, the decree, published by the Peruvian bishops, said Figari was expelled from the SCV for behavior “unacceptable in a member of an institution of the Church, as well as for cause of scandal and serious damage to the good of the Church and of each one of the faithful.”

Figari had been sanctioned by the Vatican in 2017, including being barred from having any contact with the group, from making public statements, and from returning to Peru. Accusations against the now 77-year-old included various forms of sexual, physical and psychological abuse.

In addition to Figari, the Vatican earlier this year sent punitive letters to several other top members of the group as part of its ongoing inquiry into the SCV, including three men with ties to the SCV’s Denver-based community house and parish, Holy Name church in Englewood, Co.

Each of these individuals remain under investigation.

The largest ecclesial lay movement in Peru, the SCV was founded by Figari in 1971.

Born in Lima in 1947, Figari in addition to the SCV is also the founder of a women’s lay community, 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,” all of which share the same spirituality.

A charismatic group with a knack for engaging youth, the SCV attracted a swath of vocations and was especially popular among young people drawn to its life of strict asceticism, intellectual formation and spiritual combat, sometimes describing their call in terms of fighting as elite soldiers in God’s army.

Figari stepped down as superior general of the SCV for alleged health reasons in 2010, though even then reports of alleged misconduct had begun to surface.

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

The first formal complaint against Figari was submitted to an ecclesiastical tribunal in Lima in 2011, and by 2013, two years prior to Salinas and Ugaz’s book, the tribunal had received four different complaints, including allegations that he had sexually abused minors.

No formal action was taken until after Salinas and Ugaz’s book was published in 2015, when an apostolic visitor was appointed to the SCV, and an ethics commission established to investigate and submit proposals regarding the allegations against Figari.

In 2016, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark was tapped as the Vatican delegate to oversee SCV reform. A former superior of the Redemptorist order, Tobin had been secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic life from August 2010 until October 2012, when the first complaints against Figari arrived in Rome.

By January 2017, the SCV published a report acknowledging that 66 persons could be considered victims of abuse or mistreatment at the hands of Figari and other members of the group, and it allocated more than $2.8 million in reparation funds.

That same month, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, often called the “Dicastery for Religious,” issued a decree forbidding Figari from any contact with the religious community and banning him from returning to Peru, where he was facing civil charges for abuse at the time, without permission from the superior general of the SCV.

At the time, Tobin reportedly had requested that Figari be expelled from the SCV, but that request was dropped.

Figari in 2017 was also forbidden to make any public statements and he was forbidden from living in community with the SCV, though it was requested that one member of the group be tasked as an intermediary between the founder and the SCV.

After being sanctioned, Figari launched an appeal, which was formally rejected by the Vatican on Jan. 31, 2018. He then launched a second appeal, which, according to a Feb. 20 statement from the SCV, was struck down by the Vatican on Oct. 2, 2018.

Figari is currently believed to be living in the southern Italian town of San Giovanni Rotondo, home of the famed shrine of St. Pius of Pietrelcina, better known as “Padre Pio.”

In January 2018, less than a week before Pope Francis’s visit to Peru that year, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Religious tapped Colombian Bishop Noel Londoño of Jericó to serve as a “commissioner” for the group, essentially taking the reins and guiding the community as they sought to implement their reform, while Tobin was tasked with overseeing the group’s finances.

When the SCV held its fifth general assembly in Aparecida, Brazil, in January 2019, Londoño voiced his conviction that his role was no longer needed, and that the SCV could move forward with its own leadership guiding the reform.

At the time, SCV survivors complained that Londoño had largely been absent, as he lived in another country and had rarely traveled to Peru. They charged that no real investigation or oversight was conducted and called the affair a farce.

In the 2019 assembly, Londoño announced that a special Vatican-appointed delegate would be named to serve as a point of reference with the Vatican to assist the SCV government in continuing to implement changes.

Earlier this summer Londoño announced his early retirement amid public allegations of coverup in his diocese.

In May 2019, Mexican Franciscan Father Guillermo Rodríguez was tapped as delegate ad nutum Sanctae Sedis, “at the behest of the Holy See,” to oversee the SCV and help implement reforms, and then-Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a Jesuit canonist who is now a cardinal and a close papal advisor, was tapped to revamp the group’s formation process.

In the years that have elapsed since Rodríguez and Ghirlanda were appointed, the SCV has been re-writing its governing constitutions, yet many former members and survivors have questioned the efficacy of the reform, arguing that the process has failed to yield real change.

Both Salinas and Ugaz have continued to publish articles and books on the SCV, and Ugaz in particular, who is working on a new book detailing alleged financial crimes within the SCV, has faced an onslaught of defamation charges over her reporting from various individuals and associations with ties to the SCV.

Last July, in the wake of continued legal complaints against Ugaz and ongoing allegations of financial corruption within the SCV, Pope Francis sent his top investigating team, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, to Lima to open an in-depth probe.

Scicluna is the Archbishop of Malta and also serves as adjunct secretary to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, where Bertomeu is also an official, and which, among other things, is tasked with handling allegations of clerical abuse. Scicluna also serves as president of a board of review for abuse cases within the dicastery.

Observers believe the expulsion of Figari from the SCV marks a significant blow to the group, and raises questions about its charism and its long-term future.

Immediately, the outcome also throws a spotlight on the fate of other individuals who have received punitive letters, and whether they might also receive the same sanction as the Vatican’s process moves forward.

The Vatican decree declaring, dated Aug. 9 and published on the Peruvian bishops’ social media accounts, stated that according to the findings of the Vatican’s ongoing investigation into the SCV, it was “obligatory, adequate and urgent that measures be adopted for the protection and care of the good of the Church and of each one of the faithful.”

The expulsion, the decree said, was issued “with the purpose of restoring justice damaged by the behavior of [Figari] over many years, as well as to protect in the future the individual good of the faithful and of the Church.”

It was signed by Italian Sister Simona Brambilla, secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, as well as its undersecretary, Father Aitor Jiménez Echave.

In an Aug. 14 statement in response to Figari’s expulsion, the SCV said they welcomed the gesture as “an act of pastoral charity, justice, and reconciliation inside our community” and for all those who have been abused by Figari.

The SCV said they have “strictly collaborated” with the Vatican’s ongoing investigation, and said they themselves had asked the Vatican to expel Figari from the community in 2019.

They insisted that Figari is the “historical founder” of the SCV, but is not “a spiritual reference for our community nor for the Sodalit family.”

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