VATICAN CITY — VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV made loads of enemies serving to dismantle a strong Catholic motion whose leaders bodily, sexually, spiritually and psychologically abused members. As Leo’s past record of dealing with clergy sexual abuse instances comes below scrutiny, his greatest defenders are the victims of the group, generally known as the Sodalitium Christiane Vitae.
These survivors say that beginning in 2018, when the pope was a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost met with them. He took their claims critically when few others did, received the Vatican concerned and labored concretely to offer monetary reparations for the hurt that they had endured. They credit score him with serving to prepare the important thing 2022 assembly with Pope Francis that triggered a Vatican investigation into the group that resulted in its suppression earlier this 12 months.
“What can I say about him? That he listened to me,” mentioned José Rey de Castro, a instructor who spent 18 years within the Sodalitium as the private prepare dinner for its chief, Luis Fernando Figari. “It appears apparent for a priest. However that’s not the case, as a result of the Sodalitium was very highly effective.”
Figari, a Peruvian layman, based the Sodalitium in Peru in 1971 as a lay neighborhood to recruit “troopers for God.” It was considered one of a number of Catholic societies born as a conservative response to the left-leaning liberation theology motion that swept by Latin America beginning within the Nineteen Sixties. At its top, the group counted about 1,000 core members and a number of other occasions that in three different branches throughout South America and america. It was enormously influential in Peru and has its U.S. base in Denver.
Beginning in 2000, tales about Figari’s twisted practices started to filter out in Peru when a former member wrote a sequence of articles within the journal Gente. A proper accusation was lodged with the Lima archdiocese in 2011 however neither the native church nor the Holy See took concrete motion till former member Pedro Salinas and journalist Paola Ugaz uncovered the practices of Sodalitium of their 2015 guide “Half Monks, Half Troopers.”
In 2017, a report commissioned by the group’ s new management decided that the charismatic Figari was “narcissistic, paranoid, demeaning, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist and obsessive about sexual points and the sexual orientation of SCV members.” The report discovered that Figari sodomized his recruits and compelled them to fondle him and each other, that he appreciated to observe them “expertise ache, discomfort and concern,” and humiliated them in entrance of others to reinforce his management over them.
But when members discovered the braveness to flee and denounce the abuses they suffered, they are saying they usually met a wall of silence and inaction from the Peruvian Catholic hierarchy and the Holy See. Each had been sluggish to behave towards a motion that had been formally authorised by St. John Paul II’s Vatican, which had regarded fondly on conservative, rich actions in Latin America, just like the similarly-disgraced Mexican-based Legion of Christ.
However not Prevost, whom Francis made bishop of Chiclayo, Peru in 2014 and later was elected vp of the Peruvian bishops convention. He headed the bishops’ fee created to take heed to victims of abuse, and have become a essential “bridge” between victims and Sodalitium, the victims say.
Rey de Castro, the previous Figari prepare dinner who received out in 2014 and now teaches public coverage to Peruvian police, turned to Prevost in 2021. He had been essential of a 2016 Sodalitium reparations program that, in response to the group, offered some $6.5 million in tutorial, therapeutic and monetary help to almost 100 Sodalitium victims over time.
He and Prevost met within the workplaces of the Peruvian bishops convention and stayed in contact through textual content message up till Prevost’s election as pope.
From the beginning, Rey de Castro mentioned, “Prevost was very clear in saying ‘For me, Sodalitium doesn’t have a charism,’” the church time period for the basic inspiration and motive for a spiritual motion to exist. After their 2021 assembly, Prevost helped prepare a confidential settlement with Sodalitium, he mentioned.
“For Prevost to get the Sodalitium to do one thing simply was distinctive, which was kind of what occurred,” he mentioned in an interview in Lima.
Salinas and Ugaz, for his or her half, say Prevost additionally stepped in when the Sodalitium began retaliating towards them with legal action for his or her continued investigative reporting on the group. After the Sodalitium’s archbishop of Piura, José Eguren, sued Salinas in 2018 for defamation, Prevost and the Vatican’s ambassador to Peru helped craft an announcement from the Peruvian bishops convention backing the journalists.
“It was the primary time that anybody had accomplished something towards the Sodalitium publicly,” Ugaz mentioned. “And never solely did they make this declaration, however they communicated with Francis, instructed him what was occurring and Francis received mad.”
Ugaz and Salinas offered years of emails, textual content messages and anecdotes relationship again to 2018 to exhibit how dedicated Prevost was to their trigger. Whereas not all his initiatives succeeded, Prevost stepped in at essential junctions.
“I guarantee you I share your concern and we’re in search of one of the best ways to get the letter on to the pope,” Prevost wrote one sufferer Dec. 11, 2018, about getting a letter from Sodalitium victims to Francis.
“I’ll proceed working so that there’s justice for all those that suffered by the hands of Sodalitium,” Prevost wrote one other sufferer on Dec. 23, 2018. “I ask forgiveness for the errors of the church.”
After the Sodalitium criticism accelerated towards Ugaz and Salinas, Prevost helped prepare for Ugaz to fulfill with Francis on the Vatican on Nov. 10, 2022, throughout which she laid out her findings and satisfied Francis to send his top sex crimes investigators to Peru.
Their 2023 investigation uncovered bodily abuses “including with sadism and violence, ” sect-like abuses of conscience, non secular abuse, abuses of authority together with the hacking of Ugaz’s communications and financial abuses in administering church cash. The probe additionally recognized a publicity marketing campaign some Sodalitium members had mounted towards critics.
The investigation resulted in Francis taking a sequence of initiatives, beginning with the April 2024 resignation of Eguren which Prevost dealt with. It continued with the expulsion of Figari, Eguren and 9 others, and at last the formal dissolution of the Sodalitium in April this 12 months, simply earlier than Francis died.
The Sodalitium has accepted its dissolution, requested forgiveness for “the mistreatment and abuse dedicated inside our neighborhood” and for the ache precipitated your entire church.
“With sorrow and obedience, we settle for this determination, particularly authorised by Pope Francis, which brings our society to an finish,” the group mentioned in an April assertion after the decree of dissolution was signed.
There was no reply to an e mail despatched to the group with particular questions on Prevost’s function.
Leo’s report of dealing with intercourse abuse instances whereas he was an Augustinian superior and bishop in Peru has come below renewed scrutiny since his election Might 8. And general, one of many greatest challenges going through historical past’s first American pope will likely be how he addresses the clergy abuse scandal, which has traumatized hundreds of individuals world wide and devastated the Catholic hierarchy’s credibility.
The concept Prevost might need enemies was crystalized in a current podcast hosted by Salinas on Peru’s La Mula streaming platform. Whereas Salinas devoted many of the hourlong episode to studying aloud seven years of glowing correspondence between Sodalitium victims and Prevost, he additionally mentioned Prevost had turn into the goal of a defamation marketing campaign questioning his dealing with of previous abuse instances. Salinas blamed the marketing campaign on Sodalitium’s supporters making an attempt to discredit him.
One of many instances in query is Prevost’s dealing with of abuse allegations made in 2022 by three sisters towards considered one of his monks in Chiclayo. The diocese and Vatican say Prevost did every part he was presupposed to do, together with eradicating the priest from ministry, sending a preliminary investigation to the Vatican’s intercourse crimes workplace, providing psychological assist to the victims and suggesting they go to Peruvian authorities, who archived the case as a result of it occurred too way back.
9 days after Peruvian authorities closed the case, Prevost was named to go the Vatican’s workplace for bishops and left the diocese.
The Vatican archived the case for lack of proof, however it was reopened in 2023 after it gained traction within the media. Victims’ teams are demanding an accounting from Leo.
Salinas, Ugaz and even some within the Vatican imagine Sodalitium supporters fueled publicity in regards to the case and its reopening to discredit Prevost. They be aware that the victims’ lawyer is a former Augustinian antagonist of Prevost who has since been defrocked and barred from presenting himself as a canon lawyer in Peru.
Anne Barrett-Doyle, of the net abuse database BishopAccountability.org, mentioned even when the Chiclayo case is being exploited by Sodalitium supporters, “it doesn’t imply that he dealt with the case accurately.”
“Each issues might be true: that then-Bishop Prevost acted valiantly on behalf of the victims of the Sodalitium and that he didn’t do almost sufficient to analyze the allegations in Chiclayo,” she mentioned.
Signing off his podcast, Salinas learn aloud a WhatsApp message he had exchanged with Prevost on Oct. 16, 2024, when he warned him to watch out for retaliation from the group.
“I’ve it very a lot on my thoughts,” Prevost wrote.
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Briceno reported from Lima, Peru.
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