The whistleblower called for action against the Peruvian founder 14 years ago

VALLECORSA – After news broke last week of the expulsion of the founder of an influential Peruvian lay group from the community, the original whistleblower about his abuses said he called for action to be taken against him in 2010.

Talking to Cruxthe Peruvian theologian Rocio Figueroa, who at that time belonged to the women’s branch a Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, said it demanded that Figari be removed from leadership as he was part of the community.

“At the time, that was in 2010 and it was more or less in July. I told him, I’m going to Lima and (Figari) I don’t have to be the superior of the SCV… I asked for three things: I asked to close the cause of Germán Doig’s beatification; remove Figari as superior; and thirdly, investigate Figari”.

The SCV, Figueroa said, “did the first two, (they) didn’t do the third… That same year, December 2010, I went to Lima and had a meeting with Pedro Salinas and decided to investigate “.

SCV saga

Figueroa, essentially the “deep neck” of the SCV saga, is a former member of the Marian Community of Reconciliation (MCR), which until 2022 was part of the wider SCV family. He is currently Professor of Systematic Theology at the Catholic Theological College in Auckland.

She was one of the five original members of the MCR and at one point served as superior general of the community and also served as head of the women’s section in the former Vatican Council for the Laity before uncovering abuses within the SCV and, according to her account, being bullied and harassed into silence for trying to raise the alarm.

The largest lay ecclesial movement in Peru, the SCV was founded by Figari in 1971. Born in Lima in 1947, Figari, in addition to the SCV and the MCR, also founded a religious community, the Servants of God’s Plan; and an ecclesiastical movement, called the “Christian Life Movement”, all of which share the same spirituality.

Figari in 2017 was sanctioned by the Vatican after facing various allegations of sexual, physical, spiritual and psychological abuse against members of the group.

Last week, Figari was expelled from the SCV after Pope Francis sent his two top investigators last year – Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, deputy secretary of the disciplinary section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu. an official of that office – to investigate ongoing allegations of wrongdoing, including financial corruption.

Allegations of abuse against the group were first made in 2000 by former SCV member José Enrique Escardó Steck, however scandals involving the SCV did not explode until 2015 when former SCV member and journalist Pedro Salians and Peruvian journalist Paola Ugaz co-authored a book. which detailed decades of alleged abuse in the SCV titled, Half monks, half soldiers.

After Figari’s expulsion, the SCV issued a statement saying it welcomed the gesture as “an act of pastoral charity, justice and reconciliation” for the community and the victims, noting that they had asked the Vatican to expel Figari from the community in 2019 .

However, Figueroa in her comments at Crux said it was wrong for the SCV to take credit for removing Figari, saying she herself was the one who forced them to take initial action against him in 2010 for abuse of authority, before she realized he sexually abused members as well.

Finding a problem

Figueroa said she herself was sexually abused by a high-ranking member of the SCV named Germán Doig Klinge, who for years was Figari’s second-in-command, serving as vicar general of the SCV until his death in 2001.

In 2006, Figueroa said she told a sister who had been groped inappropriately by Doig during yoga exercises ostensibly meant to teach her to control her sexuality. That sister, Figueroa said, told her another SCV member had a similar experience and that when she talked about it, “Figari said he was crazy.”

“That’s when I started to get the idea that something was wrong,” Figueroa said.

Figueroa said she and her sister spent the next two years trying to identify Doig’s other victims, and that once they identified three, she went to Figari about it in 2008, holding a private meeting with him in Rome .

By then, the SCV had opened a beatification cause for Doig, and Figari asked Figueroa to write a biography of Doig to help the process.

“I said I can’t do that biography because Germán is not a saint. He said, “What are you saying? Come to me.’ And I went to the community to have a personal meeting with Figari, and I told my story, I plucked up the courage and told him my story.”

In response, Figueroa said Figari became enraged and accused her of being “a traitor,” a liar, of trying to seduce Doig and of wanting to “destroy Sodalicio.” He forbade him to talk about the matter any more, saying that the SCV needed a saint.

Figueroa said she fell ill the next day and was eventually diagnosed with a tumor that required both treatment and surgery — treatment Figari was forbidden from having at home in Lima and received instead in Milan.

During that time, she said, Figari “was saying I was crazy, that I couldn’t go to anyone, that no one could call me. He forced me to resign from my post at the Vatican. I was so physically weak that I couldn’t do anything. So, I said to myself, I’m going to recover and do something.”

Two years later, Figueroa said, she finally compiled a report of her findings on the allegations against Doig and Figari’s abuse of authority and presented them to SCV.

In July 2010, she traveled to Lima and met with then SCV vicar general Eduardo Regal, who had taken over after Doig’s death, and presented him with her report, calling for the cause of Doig’s beatification, like Figari, to be stopped. resign for cover-up and abuse of authority and be investigated.

“I told him, if you don’t do it, if you don’t make Figari resign, I’m going to do it myself, I’m going to go to the press, so you better do it with me,” she said. saying that in response, Regal referred to Figari’s denial of the allegations, claiming innocence.

When she reminded Regal of Doig’s inappropriate yoga exercises, Figueroa said Regal claimed “that doesn’t mean it’s abuse.”

“So he didn’t really want to investigate,” she said, saying she also challenged him on whether he had contacted the victims he identified in her report, which he said he had not.

“I was angry because on that trip I found a new victim, and you tell me you can’t find victims, when I just call the phone, I call and I can find a victim, and you don’t do anything? she said.

Figueroa said she asked for Figari to be investigated because during a conversation with him in 2006, after arguing with her, Figari said he was “going to be charged and gave me the last name” of a victim .

Only later, she said, did she realize that Figari was also an abuser and that the name he had given her was one of his victims.

“That’s why I asked Regal to investigate Figari,” she said, saying that after threatening to go to the press, Regal stopped Doig’s beatification cause “to keep me quiet,” and he made Figari resign. general superior, but said it was for health reasons.

Figueroa said they never investigated Figari and never sent his report to the Vatican, which is why she began leaking information to Salinas that was eventually published in his and Ugaz’s book 2015.

She also helped Santiago, an anonymous contributor to Salinas and Ugaz’s book and the first victim to file an official complaint against Figari for sexual abuse of a minor, in writing his testimony and sending it to the ecclesiastical court in Lima in 2011.

2010 report

Figueroa’s report, which Crux has seen, includes the names of accused sex abusers, including high-ranking members, and their victims. It also detailed alleged cover-up efforts by Figari and other top SCV members.

In total, the report identified 16 confirmed and potential victims, five abusers and at least one member who intentionally covered up the abuse.

Figueroa, in his report, also noted that none of the victims received professional assistance or help after their abuse, and that the SCV allowed “slander against the victims” and did not report the sexual abuse to civil authorities.

Her proposals included apologizing to victims and providing necessary support; investigating possible cases of abuse; contacting victims who had left the SCV and ending their “isolation”; and allowing victims to pursue civil justice without hindrance.

She also cited several instances of Figari’s abuse of authority, including psychological pressure and manipulation, and problems with how they lived their vows of chastity and obedience, with too “rigid” insistence and “exaggerated” on both.

She also cited concerns about the SCV’s interaction and treatment of women, saying there was a tendency towards misogyny and a problematic suppression of emotions.

A problem with authority

After Figari resigned in 2010, Regal was elected superior general in January 2011. He served as superior general for only one year, until former SCV member Alessandro Moroni was elected in January 2012. Moroni left the community after Figari was sanctioned in 2017.

Over the years, Regal has also faced charges of cover-up and obstruction of justice in the case of notorious SCV abuser Daniel Bernardo Murguía Ward, who was arrested in 2007 after being found in a hotel room with a half-boy blank and a digital. camera containing nude photos of that boy and several other minors.

A handful of former SCV members accused Regal of ordering the seizure of Murguía’s laptop and the destruction of an SD card containing lewd images of minors when he learned Murguía had been arrested. When Murguía’s family came to the community house to pick up their belongings, Regal failed to return the laptop.

The former SCV members who made the allegations did so as part of their testimony before a Peruvian parliamentary commission of inquiry into the sexual abuse of minors in organizations, which published an extensive report on the SCV last year.

RELATED: Peru parliamentary inquiry revives allegations of abuse cover-up against lay group

Regal never testified before the commission despite receiving multiple subpoenas, with SCV failing to respond to requests for his address and contact information until their investigation was complete.

Earlier this year, Regal, who is currently superior of the SCV community house in Denver, Co, was one of several high-ranking members of the SCV to receive a punitive letter from the Vatican as part of its ongoing investigation into SCV.

RELATED: Vatican ‘007’ returns to Peru to continue investigating scandal-hit groups

He remains under investigation and is one of three SCV members with ties to the SCV community in Denver, which is attached to Holy Name Parish in Englewood, to receive punitive letters from the Vatican.

In her comments to CruxRocio condemned the SCV’s statement for claiming credit for Figari’s expulsion, saying it was representative of the “gas lights they use” against victims.

“The whole time they were doing nothing. It was just because of fear, because of the victims, because I pushed, not because they wanted to do anything,” she said.

Thanks to the victims, she said, “things have moved on, and these guys have no respect, no voice for the victims. It’s the same bulls*** not all the time.”

Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen