Pope expels Denver priest, 9 others from Catholic movement in Peru

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Pope Francis took the unusual step this week of expelling 10 people — including a priest who leads a Denver-area church — from a troubled Catholic movement in Peru that has strong ties to Colorado, a decision that came after a Vatican investigation uncovered “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality.

The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed Francis’ decision last month to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, after he was found to have sodomized his recruits.

The Peruvian Bishops Conference posted a statement from the Vatican embassy on its website that attributed the expulsions to a “special” decision taken by Francis.

The statement was astonishing because it listed abuses uncovered by the Vatican investigation that have rarely if ever been punished canonically — such as hacking someone’s communications — and cited the people the pope held responsible.

According to the statement, the Vatican investigators uncovered physical abuses “including with sadism and violence,” sect-like abuses of conscience, spiritual abuse, abuses of authority, economic abuses in administering church money and the “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism.”

The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is based in Peru but has strong connections to Colorado through the Archdiocese of Denver.

In 2003, Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput invited the Sodalitium to create its first U.S.-based community at Camp Saint Malo, a retreat center in Allenspark. In 2010, Chaput entrusted the Sodalitium with the Holy Name Catholic Parish in Sheridan, where the group is currently located.

“Thanks to the beauty of nature in the mountains of Colorado, apostolate initiatives have emerged that seek reconciliation with creation through hikes, camps, retreats and conferences,” the Sodalitium says on its website.

The pastor of that community, Father Daniel Cardó, was one of the 10 people expelled by Francis in Wednesday’s landmark decision. The pope expelled three other people with Colorado ties.

Cardó was born in Lima and ordained into the priesthood in 2006, according to an online biography. He moved to Denver in 2007, becoming the chaplain at Saint Malo before being appointed pastor at Holy Name parish in 2010. He also serves as chaplain for Christ in the City, a Catholic nonprofit dedicated to serving the poor.

The specific reasons for his expulsion from the Sodalitium were not spelled out.

Cardó, through the Archdiocese of Denver, declined an interview with The Denver Post. He told parishioners in an email that he was “very sad and shocked by the news” but that there is “no accusation of any kind of crime.”

The Archdiocese of Denver, in a statement, said it was “shocked and saddened by the news of expulsions,” which it attributed to “decades-old allegations in South America.”

“While the Archdiocese is actively working to understand the full extent of the Vatican’s investigation, we are unable to comment on specifics,” the statement said. “This news is inconsistent with our longstanding experience of the men who have served within the Archdiocese of Denver.”

The statement said Cardó “has served nobly and faithfully in Colorado for 17 years.”

“During his time here, Fr. Cardó has not faced a single disciplinary action against him,” the Archdiocese said. “He is beloved by his parishioners and well-respected in the community.”

Despite the pope’s order, Cardó remains a priest in good standing, “although he has been expelled from the community to which he belonged,” the Archdiocese of Denver told The Post in an email, adding that there are no indications of serious misconduct.

“The Vatican’s decree, which we fully embrace, has an impact that is of an internal canonical nature, regarding his belonging to a religious community, not his suitability to serve as a priest,” the Archdiocese wrote. “Again, there are no indications of any canonical or civil crime.”

Three other expelled members hold Denver connections:

Eduardo Regal, executive director of Christ in the City and “superior,” or leader, of Sodalitium’s Denver-based community José Ambrozic, former superior of the Denver-based community who now lives in Philadelphia Alejandro Bermúdez, a journalist and former executive director of the Catholic News Agency. His current endeavor, Tilma Strategies LLC, is based in Englewood, according to his LinkedIn profile. Regal, Ambrozic and Bermúdez could not be reached for comment.

But Bermúdez, in a YouTube video posted Thursday, called his expulsion unjustified, saying he plans to appeal to the next pope on the issue.

“I will never stop being a Sodalite,” he said. “I will die a Sodalite.”

The Archdiocese of Denver said Regal and Bermúdez “have served faithfully and with distinction in the Archdiocese of Denver, and the findings against them are deeply disappointing, to say the least.”

“Narcissistic, paranoid” founder investigated Figari founded the SCV, as it is known, in 1971 as a lay community to recruit “soldiers for God,” one of several Catholic societies born as a conservative reaction to the left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept through Latin America, starting in the 1960s.

At its height, the group counted about 20,000 members across South America and the United States. It was enormously influential in Peru.

Victims of Figari’s abuses complained to the Lima archdiocese in 2011, though other claims against him reportedly date to 2000. But neither the local church nor the Holy See took concrete action until one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, wrote a book along with journalist Paola Ugaz detailing the twisted practices of the Sodalitium in 2015, entitled “Half Monks, Half Soldiers.”

An outside investigation ordered by Sodalitium later determined that Figari was “narcissistic, paranoid, demeaning, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist and obsessed with sexual issues and the sexual orientation” of Sodalitium’s members.

The investigation, published in 2017, found that Figari sodomized his recruits and forced them to fondle him and one another. He liked to watch them “experience pain, discomfort and fear,” and humiliated them in front of others to enhance his control over them, the report found.

Still, the Holy See declined to expel Figari from the movement in 2017 and merely ordered him to live apart from the Sodalitium community in Rome and cease all contact with it. The Vatican was seemingly tied in knots by canon law that did not foresee such punishments for founders of religious communities who weren’t priests. Victims were outraged.

But according to the findings of the latest Vatican investigation, the abuses went beyond Figari. They included Sodalitium clergy and also involved harassing and hacking the communications of their victims, all while covering up crimes committed as part of their official duties, according to the statement.

Vatican investigators Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, right, from Spain, and Archbishop Charles Scicluna, from Malta, walk outside of the Nunciatura Apostolica during a break from meeting with people who alleged abuse by the Catholic lay group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in Lima, Peru, on July 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)“Political, social and economic power” The investigation was carried out by the Vatican’s top sex crimes investigators, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who traveled to Lima last year to take testimony from victims.

The highest-ranking person ordered expelled was Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren, whom Francis already forced to resign as bishop of Piura in April over his record, after he sued Salinas and Ugaz for their reporting.

Ugaz, the journalist, welcomed the expulsions and said the reference to Sodalitium hacking referred to her: She said her communications had been hacked in 2023 after she reported on the Sodalitium’s off-shore holdings and other financial dealings, and said she believed the group was trying to identify her sources.

“It is a demonstration that in Peru, the survivors would never have found justice and reparation (without Bertomeu and Scicluna) because the Sodalitium is an organization with a lot of political, social and economic power,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The release of such detailed information by the Vatican was highly unusual for an institution that is known more for secrecy, opacity and turning a blind eye to even obvious church crimes.

It is unclear how exactly the expulsions can be enforced or what they will mean in practical terms, especially for the laypeople involved. But at a minimum, the very public announcement would suggest that at least for this particular group, Francis was willing to take an unorthodox approach to interpreting the church’s in-house laws to send a message.

“To take such a disciplinary decision, consideration was given to the scandal that was produced by the number and gravity of the abuses that were denounced by victims, which are particularly contrary to the balanced and liberating experience of the evangelical councils,” the Vatican embassy statement said in explaining the rationale for the punishments.

There was no response to a request for comment from the Sodalitium.

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Originally Published: September 28, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.

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