From the age of 14, Kay Martin Schmalhausen Panizo was programmed by the Sodalitium of Christian Life to be a robot of the organization: obedient and warrior against Marxism in the Catholic Church and as such, he was ordained a priest at the age of 25 and named bishop at 41 years old by the late Pontiff Benedict XVI. At 60 years old, he reveals that he was a victim of sexual abuse and has transformed his suffering into accompaniment and help to victims of the Church. El Sodalicio was founded in 1971 in Peru by Luis Fernando Figari to be a whip of the left in the Catholic Church in Latin America, which was represented by the liberation theology promoted by the late Peruvian priest and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez. Currently, the Vatican is investigating the Sodalites through the mission formed by the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, and the Catalan Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu. So far this year, 15 members, including the founder, have been expelled for serious misconduct. In an interview with ABC, Kay Schamalhausen openly says that she was a victim of sexual abuse by four members of the Sodalicio: the founder Luis Fernando Figari, the vicar – now deceased – German Doig, the sodalite Alfredo Garland and the former member of the organization Alberto Gazzo. «At 14 years old it was the first abuse at the hands of Alberto Gazzo. Then, when I was 17, Alfredo Garland did the same thing to me. And then Figari and German Doig came and everything was more serious. “I lived in hell on earth,” he says when talking about what he suffered when he was a victim of abuse by the Sodalicio authorities. When trying unsuccessfully to have his own organization investigate Figari in 2013, he decided to go to Rome to tell his story. In the Vatican, another via crucis began: he told the former secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the Spaniard José Rodríguez Carballo, about the Sodalite sectarian character; the Italian Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State to the Holy See and Cardinal Sean O’Malley, among other authorities of the curia. Related News standard Yes The Pope receives the journalists who uncovered the Sodalicio scandal and promises to close it Paola Ugaz The Pontiff confirms the closure of the Catholic organization founded in Peru Schmalhausen remembers how in a meeting in Rome he told Rodríguez Carballo: «Do you “Do you remember that I told you about the sexual abuse case?” “Ah, you are the one in that case, right?” he claims the Spaniard responded. «For me this was the cover, right? He didn’t address me by my name, which was very demeaning. In other words, I have no name for him and I am the one in that case. That is, we should not touch that case,” he laments. Bishop at 41 At the age of 25, Schmalhausen was ordained a priest by the powerful Colombian monsignor Alfonso López Trujillo. His election as bishop at age 41 was sold as a triumph for the conservative wing of the Peruvian Church. Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani (Opus Dei), Nuncio Rino Passigato and Sodalite Bishop José Antonio Eguren participated in his appointment mass. «We were three candidates; Hector ‘Tito’ Velarde, Emilio Garreaud and I, why did they choose me? Maybe Figari and Doig thought they could control me more. In 2006, the then Apostolic Nuncio, Rino Passigato, informed Schmalhausen of his appointment as bishop of the prelature of Ayaviri, in Puno (border with Bolivia). His appointment coincided with that of his fellow sodalite José Antonio Eguren, but their destinies were different from the beginning and so was their treatment within the Peruvian curia. For example, while Eguren was chosen by the Episcopal Conference to give the welcome speech when Pope Francis visited Peru in 2018 and arrived in the city of Trujillo (north of the country) in 2018, Kay Shmalhausen was relegated to the shadows and subjected to cold and distant treatment. What happened? By accepting to be a bishop and being sent to the high Andean city of Ayaviri, Shmalhausen’s task was to act as an instrument to extinguish the leftist wing of the local church and for this reason, he was viewed with suspicion by the progressive priests. On the other hand, when he began to question his ‘formatting’ as part of the Sodalicio sect, he became someone whom the Sodalites viewed with suspicion. They ran a smear campaign against him and declared him mentally ill. Schmalhausen became an outcast. An invisible They multiplied it by zero. And as he ironically remembers his experiences with the curia in Rome and Peru: “Who pays attention to a pariah?” The appointment as bishop caused him to go live outside a community of the Sodalitium and that was the beginning of his mental liberation. Schmalhausen thus began to live his true discernment: «I did not make a free choice when accepting to be bishop, I made a choice by mandate and with my eyes covered. I came into a spin and began to ask myself: What am I doing here? Resignation Within the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, the current bishop emeritus lived a similar situation: he was never elected to any commission. He was also an outcast. And his resignation – at the request of the Nuncio at that time – at the age of 56 was due to the fact that they did not accept his move from Ayaviri to Lima, where his mother lives, who is over 90 years old and to whom he wanted to be closer. Since He stopped being bishop of Ayaviri and became emeritus at the age of 56. Schmalhausen is not in charge of any jurisdiction or task, so he dedicates himself to the pastoral task of listening to and accompanying victims of church abuse. Catholic. His soft but direct ways have made him an essential actor in the life of the community of former Sodalites in Lima and outside the country. For the religious, the distance between the Catholic Church and the victims of abuse is explained “by the poor training in the seminaries, which causes the clergy that comes into contact with the people to become hardened and distant.” “The Church is disconnected from reality and does not know how to deal with victims of abuse.” According to Schmalhausen, the work of the Scicluna-Bertomeu mission was key to revealing what the Sodalicio did in Peru while pointing out that the members of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference have left much to be desired in their approach to the organization’s victims.
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