Vatican counts 250 victims of dissolved Peruvian group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae

A Vatican investigation has identified around 250 victims of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, three times the 83 the Peru-founded society had acknowledged before Pope Francis dissolved it in January 2025. The catalogued abuse includes sexual misconduct alongside abuse of power and physical, psychological and spiritual abuse.

According to members of the listening-office team and testimonies gathered by EL PAÍS, at least 20 women underwent procedures to remove their ovaries. In the group's two women's branches — the Servants of the Plan of God and the Marian Community of Reconciliation — physical and psychological abuse caused menstrual problems for which superiors denied medical treatment, in some cases pushing members toward surgery instead. Male members who showed signs of homosexuality were treated with psychotropic drugs and later paired in arranged marriages with women from the female branches.

Camila Bustamante, a Chilean journalist and former member of the Servants of the Plan of God, recounted a girl with gynecological problems being told: "You already gave your life to God, what does it matter, take everything out." The woman left the organisation years later and cannot have children. "For them you could only be a nun or a mother, and now she is neither."

An expert who assisted the victims described two patterns: erasing members' emotional personality and separating them from their families. Victims entered at 13 or 14. "Inside it was like living in the 16th century, with a military discipline designed to break their will and a pattern of psychological and sexual abuse," the expert said, adding that the work was unlike anything encountered with victims of human rights violations: "Their spiritual identity had been destroyed." The flood of new testimony overwhelmed the office, which operated for one month.

The Sodalitium was founded in Peru in 1971, inspired by Spain's Falange, and led by the charismatic layman Luis Fernando Figari, who has been accused of numerous acts of sexual abuse. The society says it has paid $5.3 million in compensation to victims.

The redress process was set in motion by Leo XIV, who as a bishop in Peru made the Sodalitium his most significant battle against clerical abuse — a campaign that earned him enemies, some of whom sought to discredit him at the most recent conclave. In May he dispatched the Spanish priest Jordi Bertomeu as special commissioner to secure redress. On Wednesday, the pope arrives in Peru.