US cardinal, ex-investigator lauds Vatican action on scandal-plagued Peru group

ROME – A top American cardinal and former investigator of the Peruvian Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) has praised the work of a new Vatican inquiry into the group, voicing his belief that significant measures being taken are for the best.

Speaking during an Oct. 11 press conference during the ongoing Synod of Bishops on Synodality, American Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark said he has been involved with the SCV “in one way or another since 2016,” before he got his red hat from the pope in November 2017.

“I think the Holy Father asked me because I get by in Spanish, and I know something about religious life,” he said, referring to his time as superior general of the Redemptorists from 1997-2009.

Tobin also served as secretary of the Vatican’s now-Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life from 2010-2012, when the first complaints of sexual abuse against the SCV’s founder, Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, were sent to the department.

“I think that the Holy Father sincerely wants to do the best for the Church, the Church in Peru, the Church worldwide, and for the people that in one way or another have been affected by the issues that are well known now regarding the Sodalitium Christiane Vitae,” he said.

He voiced his confidence that measures being taken by a new investigatory team, including the expulsion of Figari in August and of 10 key members last month, “will be for the good of all those stakeholders I mentioned.”

Scandals surrounding the SCV, including broad allegations of physical, psychological and sexual abuse, as well as abuses of power, conscience and sexuality, against Figari and other top members of the SCV exploded in 2015 when journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz published their blockbuster book Half Monks, Half Soldiers, containing testimonies from a swath of former members.

In 2016, the pope tapped Tobin as the Vatican delegate to oversee the SCV reform. Two years later, the Vatican asked Colombian Bishop Noel Londoño of Jerico to serve as a “commissioner” for the SCV, taking on leadership amid their process of internal reform, while Tobin was given oversight of the SCV’s finances.

In May 2019, another team was appointed to assist the SCV through its reform efforts: Mexican Franciscan Father Guillermo Rodríguez was tasked with helping the SCV implement reforms, and now-Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a Jesuit canonist who is a close papal confidant, was appointed to revamp the group’s formation process.

However, amid ongoing allegations of abuse and financial corruption, the pope in July 2023 sent his top investigating team, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, adjunct secretary to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, an official of the department, to Lima to investigate.

Asked what steps he took to investigate the SCV given the various and complex allegations against it, including abuse, coverup, and financial corruption, Tobin said that although he wasn’t aware of it at the time, he began his own inquiry “in the synodal fashion.”

“We approached this with listening. I listened to many of the victims and members of the Sodalitium, I listened to any of the bishops of the country that would speak to me, and I also listened to, within a year or so, some real experts in field of child protection,” he said.

In the years since, the saga of the SCV has “taken a different, I wouldn’t say completely different, direction, but the Holy Father, I think, needed additional information in order for him to discern the will of God.”

“So, I quite humbly offered what I could, and now I’m happy that other fellow workers have been able to provide even some things that I couldn’t do,” he said.

Tobin, a member of the Council for the Economy and also a member of the ordinary council of the Vatican’s office of the Synod of Bishops, also spoke about an Oct. 10 audience he and fellow US Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Robert McElroy of San Diego had with Pope Francis.

In previous comments, Tobin had said the meeting focused on addressing certain “challenges” in the US Church.

However, observers noted that names missing from that meeting include Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington and Cardinal Sean O’Malley, archbishop emeritus of Boston, both of whom are also members of the synod but were not present for the meeting with Pope Francis.

Asked what issues they spoke about in their meeting with the pope, Tobin refrained from offering specific details but said he himself had requested the meeting “because I think the Church is always seeking ways to do better what we think we’re called to do.”

“I’ve personally found a lot of hope in this emphasis on a way of being Church that’s described as synodality. It’s something that Pope Francis has thought a lot about and something that he’s practiced,” he said.

He called the Jesuit commitment to discernment a “difficult act” involving an evaluation of reality in light of scripture and listening, “and trying to discover, what is God saying to the Church, and to the churches today?”

“That’s what we wanted to talk about,” he said, saying it was only he, Cupich and McElroy who attended the meeting because this is the “stuff we talk about.”

“Just like I think you have some colleagues with whom you’re probably pretty close and bounce some ideas off of, we do that,” he said, calling the conversation “very enriching.”

Attendees at Friday’s press conference also addressed LGBTQ+ issues, specifically tensions that arose during last year’s synod gathering on how best to welcome these individuals in the Church.

In his remarks, Tobin noted that the issue has largely been removed from this year’s discussion, saying it is “not evident in as dramatic a way as some would like, but it doesn’t mean that people aren’t speaking about it.”

“People are aware of a number of things, they’re aware of the particular challenges and obligations that a response to the LGBT community claims on us,” he said, but added that there is also an understanding of how differently the issue is seen throughout the world.

Similarly, Bishop Anthony MacKinlay of Sandhurst, Australia, said LGBTQ+ issues are being addressed, and that after last year’s discussion, participants “have some familiarity with one another and how issues like this land in our different cultures.”

“There’s not such surprise that in western cultures, LGBTQ issues [are] significant and prominent for some people. Equally, I think those of us from the west are not so surprised that it lands differently and has a different priority in some other parts of the world,” he said.

Pointing to the publication last year of the declaration Fiducia Supplicans from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), which authorized non-liturgical blessings of individuals in same-sex unions, MacKinlay called it “a significant step forward and in some ways a response to some of the discussion that happened last year.”

“As in many of the things that Pope Francis has done over the last year, he hasn’t waited for the final document, he’s acted already on things that were present in the discussions and in the synthesis report from last year,” he said.

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