The Pope is serious against the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, the powerful secular and ultra-conservative religious organization of Peru, founded in 1971 and inspired in its beginnings by the Spanish Falange as a militia of “soldiers of God.” After the overwhelming reports of sexual and physical abuse and sectarian behavior revealed by journalistic investigations starting in 2000, the Vatican sent a special mission a year ago to thoroughly investigate the movement and has ordered a cleanup, a difficult operation because it enjoys strong support. in politics, the judiciary and the Peruvian media. In August, the Pope expelled the founder of Sodalicio, the charismatic guru Luis Fernando Figari, 77, who led the group until 2010 and is accused of sadistically abusing minors and adults. And last week, to another 10 officials at the top of the organization, in which he sees “sectarian methods,” according to a statement from the Holy See with exceptionally harsh terms and unusual accusations. Others were “physical abuse, including sadism and violence,” “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism (defamation),” and “abuse of authority, with episodes of communications hacking.” Among those expelled are three priests and the archbishop emeritus of Piura, José Antonio Eguren. But in reality, according to Vatican sources, this is just the beginning of an operation that wants to get to the bottom and the true core of the movement’s power: its economic activities, which journalistic works valued in 2015 at about 1 billion dollars. In this sense, new decisions from the Pope are expected in the coming days.
According to journalist Paola Ugaz, one of the reporters who revealed the scandal, on the phone from Peru, the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating the Sodalicio business empire – real estate market, schools, health, agricultural industry, mining – and an alleged money laundering system through the tax havens of Panama and the Virgin Islands, built with the complicity of politics and also on the part of the Church. “They have created a State within the State,” explains Ugaz, who points to one of the top officials of the Sodalicio, the priest Jaime Baertl, as one of the main architects of this framework.
Plus, there is an unexpected Spanish connection. As EL PAÍS has verified, the beginning of the Sodalicio’s business takeoff is due to a debatable report that in 2000 endorsed one of its activities, a private cemetery, signed by the then archbishop of Tarragona, Luis Martínez Sistach, later archbishop of Barcelona and cardinal. . The organization sought legal support from the Church and turned to him, as a respected canonist, and also to the Italian Gianfranco Ghirlanda, also later named cardinal, who signed a second report. The document signed by Martínez Sistach, to which this newspaper has had access, supported the idea of considering cemeteries as “missions”, so that according to the concordat between Peru and the Holy See of 1980, they would be exempt from taxes. From there, the Sodalicio created a network of up to nine luxury, American-style cemeteries throughout the country, which was the beginning of its fortune. Nine other Peruvian bishops supported this mechanism in their territories and are now also in the Vatican’s sights. That is to say, the investigation shakes the entire Peruvian Church and responsibilities still need to be clarified.
Alarms have gone off in the Sodalicio and that is why it has deployed a smear campaign against the Vatican’s own investigation with an unprecedented move: a complaint in the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office against one of the two members of the special mission sent to the country by the Pope, the Spanish priest Jordi Bertomeu. Together with Maltese archbishop Charles Scicluna, they are the pontiff’s most trusted men in addressing major pedophile scandals, such as the Karadima case in Chile. This month, two people linked to Sodalicio have denounced Bertomeu, accusing him of revealing secrets, for allegedly leaking information about the meeting they had with him during his stay in Lima.
“They are reacting like a mortally wounded animal”
“The Sodalicio is reacting like a mortally wounded animal and its tactics with the Pope’s special mission are the same ones it has applied with those it considers enemies in the last 24 years, since the first complaints arose,” Pedro explains by phone from Lima. Salinas, the journalist who, together with Paola Ugaz, definitively uncovered the scandal with a book published in 2015. “They react as they usually do, bullying, complaining and slanderously suing those who cross their path. We have been resisting a hunt, a campaign of harassment and demolition. I never thought they were going to do the same with the Pope’s mission. The most impressive thing is that they are trying to capitalize on this to victimize themselves, that now they are victims.” According to Salinas, a very conservative estimate of Sodalicio victims indicates that there are a hundred, half of them sexual assaults, both minors and adults. The rest are victims of physical abuse, conscience abuse, and having been literally enslaved to the orders of their superiors. A report published in 2017 by Sodalicio itself After an internal investigation, he admitted sexual abuse from the seventies until 2009 to 19 minors and 17 adults.
However, the Pope’s reaction has also been unusual and forceful. In a letter that has not yet been officially published, he has warned the two people who have denounced Bertomeu that they will be excommunicated if they do not withdraw their accusations within 48 hours. He assures that “they presented themselves in a devious manner” to the Spanish priest as victims of the Sodalitium and that by accusing in their complaint all those responsible for the special mission, they are “therefore including the Holy Father himself.” The papal document accuses them of “publicly stirring up hatred against the Apostolic See” and “obstructing canonical justice.”
The criminal provision, signed by Francisco on September 25, was revealed this Sunday by the complainants themselves, Giuliana Caccia and Sebastián Blanco, who published a 12+ minute video on YouTube titled They want to excommunicate us. In it, speaking to the camera, they tell what happened and announce that they will not obey. In their speech they address the Pope to insist that he is “misinformed”, pointing to Bertomeu.
“For more than 50 years nothing has happened to them, they are very protected, they have very strong political and business relations. But now the Vatican does scare them, because they cannot control it,” says Paola Ugaz, who affirms that the organization “always has a prosecutor who opens an investigation for them, no matter how absurd it may be.” The journalist believes that the cleanup ordered by the pontiff is bringing to light facts that seriously affect the image and business of the Sodalicio, closely related to the Peruvian upper classes. “If the Pope’s mission had not come, nothing would have ever happened to them.”
Ugaz explains that, according to his research published in the newspaper The Republicthe starting point of the economic plot of the Sodalitium is in the concordat signed in 1980 between the Holy See and Peru, which considers non-profit activities of the Church, such as dioceses and parishes, exempt from taxes. But also missions, a more ambiguous term. It is precisely at this point where the Sodalicio saw its opportunity. Members of the movement bought a cemetery an hour from Lima and managed to force canon law to make it considered a “mission.” They achieved it thanks to reports from the Spanish Luis María Sistach and the Italian Gianfranco Ghirlanda. Later, according to Ugaz, thanks to the support of the then nuncio, the Italian Rino Passigato, and also of the authorities, during the time of Alan García, president of Peru between 2006 and 2011 and a close friend of Figari and Baertl, they managed to The cemeteries were classified as “tributary island”, practically an extraterritorial area within Peru.
“No Peruvian authority could even go in to see what was there, which is unusual in a country. They stretched the concordat like a piece of gum and with their friends in politics then did everything they wanted. And they had cheap labor with the members of the Sodalicio, whom they enslaved,” says Ugaz. “This is how they began to capitalize money. Their contacts made all doors open for them. “Businessmen and individuals lent them money to invest in black money and they returned it with interest above the market,” he says, reaffirming the research he has published. As he has reported in his articles, the Sodalicio accumulated a great fortune and expanded to other countries: Ecuador, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil. One of the keys to which the Vatican’s investigation points is that the organization should be able to justify where the social work is in which they have reinvested their profits as non-profit entities.
“They also began to move money through companies off shore. First to Panama, then to the Virgin Islands, and finally to Denver, Colorado, in the United States, where these companies are domiciled today. They took the funds to escape from the Peruvian tax entities and the Vatican,” says Ugaz. In Denver, he points out, they have the Holy Name Church and have the protection of the city’s archbishop, the ultra-conservative Samuel Joseph Aquila. All those responsible for the Sodalicio have been leaving Peru in recent years, as new information came to light. When ten members of the leadership were expelled from the Church last week, the Sodalitium statement was issued from Denver.
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