Vatican expels four more members of scandal-plagued Peru group

ROME – As part of its ongoing inquiry into abuse and financial corruption within Peru’s Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), the Vatican expelled four members accused of abuse and financial corruption, including the exploitation of a church-state agreement to gain tax incentives.

Those expelled this week include top-ranking members of the SCV who are considered to be the architects of a financial empire at its height worth around $1 billion through the misuse of a 1980 “concordat” between the Holy See and Peru, which governs relations between the two and, among other things, grants tax exemptions to charitable and mission-based causes.

It is believed that the SCV made most of its money through funeral and burial services offered at nine large cemeteries throughout Peru canonically designated as missions, and which were therefore tax exempt, and which were donated to dioceses while the SCV maintained partial ownership and controlled their administration.

For years, the SCV has been at the center of scandals involving allegations of sexual, physical, and psychological, as well as the abuse of power and conscience and financial corruption, against its founder, layman Luis Fernando Figari, and other top members.

After several failed attempts at reform Pope Francis last year sent his top investigators – Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, an adjunct secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, an official of the dicastery – to Lima to conduct an in-depth inquiry into the allegations.

The Vatican as part of its investigation expelled SCV founder Luis Fernando Figari, who had previously been sanctioned for the sexual abuse of minors in 2017, from the group in August.

Last month an additional 10 top-ranking members were expelled for a variety of crimes, including 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.”

Many of those expelled have ties to the SCV’s Denver community house and the parish attached to it, Holy Name in Sheridan.

In an Oct. 21 communique, the Vatican’s embassy in Peru announced that in addition to Figari and the 10 members expelled last month, two additional members, including Jose Ambrozic, former vicar general of the SCV and former superior of the Denver house who also lived in their Philadelphia community.

The other member expelled Monday was SCV priest Luis Antonio Ferroggiaro, who is from Arequipa and is accused of sexually abusing a minor.

According to the communique, they were expelled for “abuse of power and authority, particularly in the form of abuse in the administration of ecclesiastical goods, as well as sexual abuse, in some cases including minors.”

In this regard, the communique said that Ferroggiaro’s expulsion does not interfere with a previous investigation into his conduct by the DDF, which is being carried out simultaneously with the Vatican’s inquiry into the SCV.

Two days later, on Oct. 23, the nunciature in Peru announced that Father Jaime Baertl, former spiritual assistant for the SCV and widely considered to be the group’s financial czar and who is also accused of sexual misconduct, and Juan Carlos Len, who has also been accused of financial corruption, had also been expelled.

The decision was made, according to the communique, “considering the severity of the sexual abuse committed by one of the accused, as well as the personal responsibility of these two consecrated persons in numerous irregular and illicit actions by organizations of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae.”

Invoking the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, the communique said that on this basis, some of the economic management and investments by Baertl and Len within the SCV uncovered by Scicluna and Bertomeu as well as the financial institutions of the Holy See “constitute sinful actions that betray the Gospel.”

It said that the illicit actions uncovered, beyond causing international scandal, “disfigure the evangelizing mission of the church” and damage its credibility, as well as “the healthy cooperation that regulates relations between the church and the Peruvian state.”

The communique stressed that Pope Francis is saddened by the scandals involving the SCV and “asks forgiveness from the people of God and from civil society as a whole.”

It also offered assurances “that appropriate measures have been taken to correct the reprehensible actions described above and to avoid their repetition in the future,” and asked that the SCV “without further delay, begin a path of truth, justice and reparation.”

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