‘Troubling’ Catholic intercourse ring of ‘sadists’ uncovered as Pope Francis cracks whip

Pope Francis has expelled 10 individuals including a bishop from a troubled Catholic movement in Peru following a Vatican investigation that revealed “sadistic” abuses.

The action against the leaders of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, comes after last month’s decision by Francis to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, who was found guilty of sexually assaulting his recruits.

The Peruvian Bishops Conference announced the news, sharing a statement from the Vatican embassy on its website. The statement is remarkable as it details abuses discovered by the Vatican investigation that have seldom been punished canonically – such as hacking someone’s communications – and named those the Pope held accountable.

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The Vatican investigators reportedly uncovered physical abuses “including with sadism and violence,” cult-like conscience abuses, spiritual abuse, authority abuses, economic abuses in managing church funds, and the “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism.”

The latter appears to be directed at a journalist linked to Sodalitium who has targeted the movement’s critics on social media.

Figari, who founded the movement in 1971 as a lay community to recruit “soldiers for God,” led one of several Catholic societies that emerged as a conservative response to the left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept through Latin America from the 1960s.

The group, at its peak, boasted about 20,000 members across South America and the United States, holding significant influence in Peru, reports the Express US.

An external investigation commissioned by Sodalitium later concluded 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, released in 2017, discovered that Figari had sodomised his recruits and forced them to touch him and each other. He enjoyed watching them “experience pain, discomfort and fear,” and degraded them in front of others to increase his control over them, according to the report.

Despite the allegations, the Vatican chose not to expel Figari from the movement in 2017. Instead, he was ordered to live separately from the Sodalitium community in Rome and cease all contact with it.

The decision was seemingly influenced by canon law, which did not anticipate such punishments for founders of religious communities who were not priests. This decision sparked outrage among victims.

However, a recent Vatican investigation revealed that the abuses extended beyond Figari. It included members of the Sodalitium clergy and also involved harassment and hacking of their victims’ communications while covering up crimes committed as part of their official duties, according to the statement.

The investigation was led 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. They travelled to Lima last year to gather testimonies from victims.