Peru abuse victims applaud Vatican mission, request meeting with Pope
ROME – Former members of a suppressed scandal-plagued Peruvian lay group, along with peasants who claim to have been routinely harassed by the same group, have issued a joint call for justice, reparation and a meeting with Pope Leo XIV.
On May 29, members of the Castillo and Catacaos peasant farming commune in Piura, Peru, stood side-by-side with former members of the Soldalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), to decry abuses and alleged financial corruption of the outfit, and to advocate for civil and ecclesial action.
The SCV, founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in 1971, was once one of the most powerful ecclesial movements in Latin America, with consecrated and lay members, before scandals erupted in 2015 involving decades of various abuses inside the group, including the sexual abuse of minors.
Figari was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2017, and papally-mandated leadership was appointed to reform the group. Pope Francis in July 2023 sent his top investigating duo to Lima to investigate, culminating in the expulsion of 15 members, including Figari and other top aides, and the suppression of the group and its other branches earlier this year.
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The so-called “Special Mission” investigating the SCV consisted of Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, adjunct secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, an official of the DDF.
Bertomeu, who has been sued by two allies of the SCV in a case that is still pending despite twice having been ordered to be closed, was appointed by Pope Francis as Apostolic Commissioner for the liquidation of the SCV’s assets.
In a joint 23-point communique after Thursday’s press conference, members of the Catacaos peasant farming community and victims of physical, sexual and psychological abuse demanded several actions from the Vatican.
Among them were to publish the official decrees of the suppression for the SCV and its other branches, allowing the precise motivations for the decision to be known, and to have a private audience with Pope Leo XIV in Rome.
They also asked that Scicluna and Bertomeu’s findings, particularly on alleged financial crimes within the SCV, be sent to the United States for investigation by the State, given that significant portions of their money is believed to have ended up in SCV-managed holding companies in the US.
Victims also asked that the work of Bertomeu as commissioner be supported, given the judicial and mediatic campaign against him.
Thursday’s press conference was organized by The National Coordinator of Human Rights (CNDDHH) in Peru, a coalition of civil organizations that work for the defense, promotion and education in human rights in Peru.
For years, the coalition has assisted members of the Catacaos community who claim to have been routinely harassed by companies with ties to the SCV, under the watch of SCV Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren Anselmi, who until led the Piura archdiocese until April 2024, when he was asked to resign amid the Special Mission’s inquiry due to allegations of coverup and financial corruption.
In their May 29 communique, the Catacaos farmers and SCV victims said the decision to suppress the group and its other branches brought “relief and hope,” but cautioned that the act “does not erase the suffering, nor restore in itself the damage caused.”
Calling the suppression “an important step toward moral and symbolic reparation,” they called for the perpetrators of abuse and coverup to be “investigated and sanctioned before Peruvian, North American and Vatican justice, since justice cannot be incomplete.”
They thanked Pope Francis for “not having looked the other way” in sending the Special Mission, and they also thanked Pope Leo XIV for his support of SCV victims, having been actively involved in the case and facilitating reparations for former members since 2018, when the then-Robert Prevost was still Bishop of Chiclayo.
Victims voiced their solidarity with Pope Leo, who after signing the decree for Eguren’s ouster in April 2024 as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops came under fire from supporters and members of the SCV, some of whom lodged false allegations of coverup while he was still bishop of Chiclayo.
To this end, they condemned what they said was “the silence of other Vatican entities” in the face of the allegations.
They thanked Scicluna and Bertomeu for their support, and voiced solidarity with Bertomeu for the “unjustified and unfortunate attacks he has received from satellites of the Sodalitium”, including the legal suit against him, filed by Giuliana Caccia and Sebastian Blanco, the wife and brother, respectively, of Figari’s longtime personal secretary, Ignacio Blanco.
“Monsignor Bertomeu and the now-Pope Leo XIV both enjoy the dubious honor of also being victims of the Sodalitium themselves,” the SCV victims said, and also condemned attacks by SCV members and allies on journalists reporting on the group’s scandals.
These journalists – Pedro Salinas, Paola Ugaz, and Daniel Yovera – have faced legal harassment for their reporting on the SCV, including defamation suits and allegations of other crimes that carry hefty jail sentences.
They also pushed for greater reparation, condemning previous statements from the SCV in announcing their suppression that they had already compensated victims.
However, those present at Thursday’s press conference and those who signed the statement said the sums provided were “insufficient for the physical and moral damages done, which will never be completely healed.”
Victims also condemned the fact that, upon accepting initial offers of financial compensation, it was contingent on them singing confidentiality agreements which among other things had the victims pledge to never make complaints of a similar nature again.
These agreements, the victims said, “are abusive and a further revictimization.”
Also condemned was the SCV-run Saint John the Baptist Civil Association (ACJSB) and the IMP Investment organization, which the Catacaos farmers said have been behind their legal own legal harassment amid attempts to run them off their land.
The Catacaos farmers lamented that they were not only excluded from the SCV’s initial financial reparations, but they said they have also been “persecuted in the courts of Piura” by the ACSJB “with the indifference of [Eguren Anselmi], as if they were dangerous criminals.”
Ongoing legal cases against the farmers as well as those against Salinas, Ugaz and Yovera, the victims said, are “an insult to basic constitutional rights in a democratic country that prides itself on being so, such as freedom of the press.”
Victims voiced gratitude to the international media that has shown solidarity with them and with the journalists investigating the SCV’s abuses and alleged crimes, and condemned what they said was “the complicit silence of Peruvian society, anesthetized by the corruption that has been subduing our republican institutions for years.”
To this end, they lamented that it took the intervention of the Vatican to achieve “a bit of justice” for victims, including for alleged financial corruption, which they said “would never have been possible in a state with strong and solid democratic institutions, monitored by the mechanisms of a state of law.”
They then issued a series of demands, asking that the decrees of suppression for the SCV and its branches be published as well as the decree appointing the apostolic commissioner for the liquidation of the SCV’s assets.
“We have the right to know for what reason the Sodalitium was suppressed and what possibilities we have to finally reach a just reparation,” they said.
They also asked that victims of the SCV’s four branches be received in a private audience by Pope Leo XIV “as soon as possible,” as 25 years have passed since the first allegations were made, “without, since then, having any pope receive us.”
Another request was that the Vatican Secretary of State send information on alleged financial crimes, including international money laundering from the ACSJB to holding companies based in Denver, to United States financial authorities for investigation.
If these crimes are proven, the victims asked that the money, allegedly made by the abuse of a 1980 church-state agreement in Peru granting tax breaks to the church, be repaid to “the poorest victims and communities in the areas where the Sodalitium committed these presumed crimes.”
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They asked that bishops and cardinals who once voiced support for the SCV publish “a declaration of retraction and of solidarity with us, the victims.
They specifically pointed the finger at Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos, former bishop of Trujillo and former president of the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference, as well as the bishops who agreed to accept SCV-run “mission cemeteries” in their dioceses, and which apparently contributed enormously to building the SCV’s vast financial empire, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.
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Victims also condemned Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda and Spanish Cardinal Luis Martinez Sistach, who in 2000 together with SCV legal representation crafted the canonical “mission cemetery” model that allowed the cemeteries access to tax breaks, which in turn ensured the SCV was able “to build its presumably corrupt financial plot.”
Previous rounds of papally-appointed leadership of the SCV who :did nothing to support the victims” should also make statements of support, the victims said.
Bishops who accept members of the now-suppressed SCV into their dioceses must do so with responsibility, “avoiding a new edition of what has been a Catholic group with a sectarian character and without an original charisma,” they said.
They asked Vatican authorities to guarantee “methods of integral reparation” for all victims, including financial compensation, therapy and public recognition of their status as victims, and to appeal to Peruvian authorities so that the judicial persecution of the journalists and Catacaos farmers cease.
Victims requested that the Vatican institutionalize the Special Mission for investigating abuses in the church, “so that it ceases to be an initiative that depends solely on the will of a pope and becomes a stable Vatican organism that can act with efficacy in any place of the Catholic world whenever it is necessary.”
Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen