ROME – Ten key members of a controversial lay movement in Peru have been expelled from the group as part of an ongoing Vatican investigation of charges of abuse and misconduct, including alleged financial irregularities.
Among those expelled from the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) on Wednesday are several members with ties to a Denver parish, and one who is apparently the first Catholic to face Vatican sanction for alleged journalistic malpractice.
The announcement comes after over a year of inquiry by the Vatican’s top investigating duo, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, an adjunct secretary to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, an official in the same department.
The expelled members include Eduardo Regal, superior of the SCV’s Denver-based community; Father Daniel Cardó, pastor of the SCV-run Holy Name parish in Denver; and Alejandro Bermúdez, a journalist and former head of the EWTN-owned ACI Group, an international media conglomerate that includes the English-language Catholic News Agency website. He lives in the SCV Denver community house and now runs Tilma Strategies LLC and is a consultant for Catholic media, including the website Catholic Vote.
Others include Óscar Tokumura, Erwin Scheuch, Humberto Carlos del Castillo, Rafael Alberto Ismodes, Ricardo Alfonso Trenemann Young, Miguel Salazar, and Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren, who in April was removed from his position as head of the Peruvian Archdiocese of Piura after facing a swath of allegations against him, including abuse and financial corruption.
Also being investigated is José Ambrozic, former superior of the Denver-based community who now lives in Philadelphia.
RELATED: Vatican ‘007’ back in Peru to continue probe of scandal-plagued groups
The expulsions, announced by the Peruvian Episcopal Conference (CEP), were personally approved of by the pope.
A decree signed Sept. 25 and published by the CEP Wednesday said that in making the decision to expel the 10 members, consideration was given “to the scandal caused by the number and seriousness of the abuses reported by the victims, which are particularly contrary to the balanced and liberating experience of the evangelical counsels in the context of the ecclesial apostolate.”
The list of abuses committed by members, named in the decree, contained several novelties, such as physical abuse, including “sadism and violence,” as well as the abuses of conscience, spiritual abuse, and the abuse of power and authority, including “episodes of hacking of communications and harassment in the workplace,” as well as the cover up of crimes committed within the organization,” and abuse of “the apostolate of journalism.”
They follow the expulsion a month ago of the SCV’s founder, Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, who established the SCV in Lima in 1971, and had previously been sanctioned by the Vatican in 2017 for the physical, psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse of members, including the sexual abuse of minors.
In addition to the SCV, Figari 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 (SPD); and an ecclesial movement called the Christian Life Movement (CLM), all of which share the same spirituality.
RELATED: Capping a decade-long probe, Vatican expels founder from scandal-plagued movement
A strong affiliation with Denver
One of the most notable aspects of the list of those expelled and those still under investigation is that four of them have either lived or currently live at the SCV community house attached to Holy Name parish in Denver, which is also believed to be the center of the SCV’s global financial network.
Those four are Cardó, Regal, Bermúdez and Ambrozic. Eguren, though living in Piura, would also often travel to Denver for vacation, staying in the community house of the MCR.
The SCV’s presence in Denver began with the Christian Life Movement (CLM), founded by Figari in Lima in 1985, and which received recognition as an International Association of Christian Faithful of Pontifical Right on March 23, 1994.
Cardinal James Stafford, the former Archbishop of Denver, invited the CLM to Denver in 1992, and they formally began apostolic work there in 1998.
In June 2003, the MCR took up residence in an empty priory at St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish after being invited to Denver by Stafford’s successor, Archbishop Charles Chaput. The SCV arrived the same year and established a community house at the Camp St. Malo retreat center on the outskirts of Denver.
The SCV later vacated after a fire destroyed large portions of the retreat center, and in October 2010, Chaput entrusted Holy Name parish in Englewood to the CLM and Cardó was appointed pastor, leading the SCV to open a community house on the parish property.
In 2014, Chaput, who by then had been appointed archbishop of Philadelphia, invited the SCV to establish a community house there that was responsible for the pastoral leadership of St. Agatha & St. James Parish and the Newman Center for the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University in West Philadelphia.
The current Archbishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila, was a priest in Denver when members of the MCR, called “Fraternas,” first arrived, and he served as their chaplain, frequently celebrating Mass for them and hearing their confessions.
In a statement on Thursday, the Archdiocese of Denver said it was “shocked and saddened” by the news of the expulsions, and that the news is “inconsistent with our longstanding experience of the men who have served within the Archdiocese of Denver.”
Allegations against Denver members
The number of SCV members who are also Denver residents has led some observers to believe that Denver has become a preferred outpost for members of the group facing pressure in Peru, and who want to get out of the spotlight.
Cardó, pastor of Holy Name parish, has been publicly accused of the physical assault of a fellow member of the SCV in their formation house in Colombia, slapping him in the face on multiple occasions, and often punching him in the stomach until he fell to the ground, supposedly to make him a stronger man, among other things.
In his own comment Thursday, Cardó said that “there is no accusation of any kind of crime” and that Aquila “is very close to us during this time and wants me to continue at Holy Name.”
Regal, who is currently superior of the SCV’s Denver community, has been accused of physical abuse and the coverup of child pornography, among other things.
Regal previously served as vicar general of the SCV, and in that role apparently ignored a request from a whistleblower in the MCR to investigate Figari in 2010. However, Figari at that time resigned as superior general of the SCV and Regal was elected in his place in 2011, holding the position for a year, until January 2012.
RELATED: Whistleblower asked for action on Peruvian founder 14 years ago
Regal has also faced public allegations of coverup and of obstructing justice by former SCV members in relation to the case of notorious SCV abuser Daniel Bernardo Murguía Ward, who was arrested in 2007 after being found in a hotel room with a half-naked young boy and a digital camera containing nude photos of that boy and several other minors.
The former SCV members who made these allegations did so as witnesses for a Peruvian Parliamentary Investigatory Commission on the Sexual Abuse of Minors in Organizations, which published a lengthy report on the SCV last year and before which Regal was called to give testimony, though he never appeared.
RELATED: Parliamentary inquest in Peru revives accusations of abuse cover-up against lay group
Ambrozic has been publicly accused of physical abuse and coverup, as well as financial corruption, while Bermúdez has been publicly accused of the verbal abuse and harassment of employees, and of threatening and harassing critics and others on social media, often telling critics to take the addictive anti-anxiety drug “Xanax.”
Bermúdez came under fire from victims in May for his response to a social media post published on the platform X by Spanish Father Francisco Delgado, who in a May 7 post said he had been instructed by his archbishop to refrain from online activities, and that “I have no choice but to defend myself against a slander that I hope one day to be able to give details about.”
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In a response to Delgado’s post, Bermúdez wrote, “Dear Father: I know the miserable subjects behind the accusations and the way they have converted the institutions of the Holy See into weapons of sodomy against children of the Church. But God is stronger. United in fidelity and prayer.”
Though he did not mention names, Bermúdez’s reference to “institutions of the Holy See” was interpreted by many as a reference to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which continues to investigate the SCV. Many observers saw that tweet as indicative of a broader pattern of Bermúdez using media in an aggressive fashion to attack critics of the SCV and other perceived enemies.
In a note to Crux, Delgado said he has never had an institutional relationship with the SCV, although he knows some members as he knows Catholics from other groups and movements.
Other individuals affiliated with the SCV have had a presence in Colorado. Father Ricardo Coronado, a canonist who holds a longstanding friendship with several top SCV members, for nearly 20 years served as judicial vicar and chancellor of the Diocese of Colorado Springs, stepping down in 2022 over difficulties with Bishop James Golka.
He has been barred from practicing ecclesial law and is currently under investigation by the Vatican for what has been described as a presumed crime against the sixth commandment.
RELATED: Scandal-plagued Peruvian group pushes back against Vatican inquiry
An SCV financial outpost
Charges of financial irregularities have long been featured among the allegations against the SCV, especially in Peru. According to Peruvian journalist Paola Ugaz, who helped unveil abuse within the SCV in 2015 and who has extensively investigated its finances, once the SCV began to feel pressure from the state prosecutor over the allegations, it moved its money from Peru to the United States, placing significant portions of their funds in two “offshore” companies in Denver.
RELATED: Controversial lay group in Peru denies charges of tax dodging, fiscal fraud
One of these companies, the Santa Rosa Foundation, was established in Denver in 2016 and is dedicated to providing “general support to SCV Catholic communities in various countries.” The leadership of the foundation has consisted at various junctures of SCV members José Ambrozic, Enrique Elías Dupuy, Juan Carlos Len, and Ernesto Vallejo Barba.
For years Dupuy has served as the SCV’s liaison with the Vatican Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in Rome.
RELATED: Scandal-plagued Peruvian group pushes back against Vatican inquiry
Another SCV holding company, Providential Inc., was established in Panama in 2007, but a request to transfer it to Colorado was made in 2016 and accepted in March 2017, according to a notarized letter that Crux has seen.
Both of these entities, the Santa Rosa Foundation and Providential Inc., share the same street address as the SCV-run Holy Name parish and Saint Agnes pastoral center in Sheridan, Denver, Co., where Cardó serves as pastor.
The SCV is apparently expanding its community house at Holy Name, with more members expected to move there from Peru and throughout Latin America. It is believed that the SCV could be moving its primary formation house from Lima to Denver, and that this could be a reason for the expansion.
As the Vatican’s investigation into the SCV continues, some observers have suggested that the new expulsions may be a prelude to even more dramatic measures, including the possible dissolution of the group.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly named certain individuals as among those expelled from the SCV, as a result of an editing error. The error has been corrected.
One of those individuals, Father Jaime Baertl, sent a response which can be found here: https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americas/2024/09/priest-responds-to-crux-coverage-of-the-scv
Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen
