ROME – Pope Francis Friday met with the first survivor to publicly denounce abuses in the Peru-based Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), confirming its suppression and assuring his intention to put victims at the center of the process.

“It was not only like a dream when they granted me the audience, but it is still a dream now, because I feel a lot of happiness, it’s been 25 years of struggle, but I also feel a great burden because there are many voices that I am carrying,” said José Enrique Escardó.

Escardó also met on Friday with American Cardinal Robert Prevost, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, and with Italian Sister Simona Brambilla, prefect of the Dicastery for Religious, to discuss the SCV case.

He said he appreciated Pope Francis’s attitude, saying the pope “listened and I liked that a lot. I didn’t find myself in front of an authority who was telling me what they were doing to be applauded, or what I should do, but he was silent and listening.”

“His body language surprised me very much because at each thing that I would say, he would make it clear that he was disturbed, that he was disgusted, that he was sad,” Escardó said, saying the pope’s reactions to his testimony were “very physical” and he left feeling “comforted because I felt that he listened to me.”

A former member of the SCV who says he experienced devastating sexual, physical and psychological abuse by various members of the group, as well as continual public harassment over his complaints, Escardó an advocate who founded and runs the Survivors Network of Peru.

He was recently in Geneva, where he spoke to the United Nations about victims’ rights and drew attention to the SCV case, which for the past decade has been one of the Catholic Church’s most notorious abuse scandals, as the group for decades was one of Latin America’s most powerful and influential ecclesial groups.

Founded in 1971 by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, the SCV is one of four different entities Figari founded, and was known for the connections members had in elite conservative circles throughout Peru and beyond.

Escardó became the first former member to speak out about abuses in the SCV, publishing a series of six articles in the popular Peruvian weekly Gente, founded by his father, over a period of six weeks describing the brutal and filthy practices recruits were subjected to.

Speaking to journalists following his Jan. 24 meeting with the pope, Escardó said that among other things, he had a knife put to his neck, he was forced to sleep on the stairs, and to wash his hands and face with dirty toilet water.

“I suffered daily physical violence, psychological violence from many leaders of the Sodalicio,” he said, referring to the group by its Spanish name.

It was only two years ago, he said, that he realized that he had also been sexually assaulted by top-ranking member German Doig, who for years was Figari’s second-in-command but who has since died and at one point was a candidate for sainthood before allegations of sexual abuse went public.

Escardó said he eventually left after crying in the bathroom everyday for five months, and that it took 13 years for him to eventually write about his experiences publicly, beginning what he described as “a hunt against me” by members of the SCV.

“They said I was the antichrist, that I was the devil who wanted to destroy the Catholic Church…I couldn’t work, I suffered death threats, threats that they were going to rape my daughter when she was four years old, death threats against my daughter by phone,” he said.

To this day, Escardó said he is routinely trolled and insulted by SCV members and adherents on social media.

He described the past 25 years as “a persecution that to be honest, I don’t know how I’m still here. I think my sense of humor has kept me alive, but many times I have wanted to end my life. I have wanted to stop doing this, but what is happening now I think is a sign that I have to continue.”

His audience with the pope came days after news was leaked that Francis had formally suppressed the group, which Escardó said was a coincidence, as he did not know about the decision when he made his request for an audience, or when it was granted.

Massive public scandals surrounding the SCV did not explode in Peru until 2015, with the publication of the book Half Monks, Half Soldiers, by Peruvian journalists Pedro Salinas, also a former member of the group, and Paola Ugaz, detailing decades of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, as well as spiritual abuse and abuses of power and conscience against Figari and many others.

After sending his top investigators to Peru to investigate allegations of abuse and financial corruption in the SCV in July 2023, Pope Francis expelled Figari and 14 other elite members before suppressing the group this year.

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He named Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, who alongside Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta was tasked with investigating the SCV, as commissioner overseeing the group’s suppression.

Escardó described the suppression not as the end of the process, but “a new phase.”

Once the formal decree comes out, he said, “we will see if there is anything mission and that will have to be implemented in the strategy with the commissioner, with Jordi Bertomeu.”

During his audience with the pope, Escardó said the pope encouraged him to keep going forward and not to be afraid, and he also pledged that “whatever you of (Msgr.) Jordi Bertomeu, I will sign it.”

“That seemed to me like a sign that the victims are first and should be first, which was something I said about five times at the meeting,” he said.

Escardó said he also proposed to the pope, to Prevost and to Brambilla that a council of survivors be formed to vet and advise on the decisions made regarding the SCV’s suppression, “because we are the experts on this subject.”

He stressed the importance of pursuing civil justice and of focusing on the reparation of victims, which he says goes beyond simply giving them money.

“The victims are individuals, they are people. Money given in an almost serial manner is re-victimizing because the person, the individual, and their needs are not recognized,” he said, noting that some need money, but others need therapy or medical care, or access to education that was denied.

Another important aspect of the suppression, he said, is caring for current members of the SCV who have nothing to do with the abuses that occurred.

“There are still many innocent people within the Sodalitium who live in the communities. We have to take care that these people make a transition that does not harm them, a transition that can save them and can take them, if they want, to continue their spiritual life in another place where they are not threatened by a community that can destroy them,” he said.

Escardó said he also stressed the need for the church to speak out and not stay silent on abuse, as silence is often “the weapon of the aggressor,” and he condemned what he said was decades of inaction by the Peruvian bishops on the SCV scandals.

Referring to the clerical sexual abuse scandals in Chile, which exploded in 2018 and culminated with every bishop submitting a letter of resignation, Escardó said that “the inaction, negligence, irresponsibility and lies of the bishops in Peru was much stronger than what happened in Chile.”

Among other things, he noted that the newly elected president of Peruvian bishops conference, Carlos García Camader of Lurín, was the first bishop to strike a deal with the SCV for one of nice mission-cemeteries that critics have said earned them the bulk of their vast financial resources.

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Escardó said that during his meetings with the pope and Prevost, he also discussed allegations against a prominent SCV bishop, José Antonio Eguren, who was expelled from the group and ousted from leadership of the Piura archdiocese over allegations of coverup and financial corruption, whom he has accused of physical and psychological abuse.

He also asked that Eguren and the priests who have been expelled from the SCV be defrocked, since they “have been recognized as having committed crimes.”

Questions remain about the fate of the other three entities founded by Figari, however, Escardó voiced his belief that if they are not suppressed too, “nothing will happen because they will find somewhere to hide.”

Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen