Luis Fernando Figari

Consecrated layman. Figari founded the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) in Lima in 1971 as a Catholic lay community of consecrated laymen and priests. Officially approved by Pope John Paul II as a society of apostolic life in 1997, the reputedly ultraconservative group eventually spread to 25 countries and claimed to have 20,000 members.

In 2000, ex-member José Enrique Escardó Steck became the first person to reveal abuses within the Sodalicio, as it is called, when he published a six-part series in Gente magazine detailing the psychological and physical suffering he endured as a teenager in the group.

In 2007, Sodalicio member Daniel Beltran Murguía was caught by Lima police in a hotel room, preparing to photograph an 11-year-old boy in the nude.

In 2008, Sodalicio leaders were notified of abuses perpetrated by Germán Doig, Figari’s second-in-command until his death in 2001.

Figari continued leading the group until he resigned abruptly on December 31, 2010, citing health problems. An inquiry later commissioned by the Peruvian Congress revealed that he faced pressure to resign because of allegations of abuse. His sexual, psychological, and physical abuse of minors and young men have since been extensively documented.

In 2011, the first public victims’ testimonies accusing Figari of sexual abuse appeared in the now-defunct newspaper Diario16.

In 2015, two journalists, ex-Sodalicio member Pedro Salinas and investigative reporter Paola Ugaz, published more than 30 accounts by victims of Sodalicio leaders. Their book, Mitad monjes, mitad soldados, detailed cult-like control, humiliation, and severe abuse within the organization. It proved to be a watershed in the history of the Sodalicio, galvanizing responses by prosecutors, the Peruvian Congress, the Vatican, and the disgraced sect itself. It also marked the beginning of a reckoning, however slow and sputtering, of the Peruvian church for its inadequate response to clergy sex abuse.

In early 2017, the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life finally took action against Figari, banning him from contact with any Sodalicio members and from returning to Peru.

On February 13, 2017,the Sodalicio published its own report of an investigation by outside experts that named five lay leaders of the Sodalicio as sexual abusers of minors, including Figari, who it cited as a sexual abuser of one minor and six young adults.

In late 2017, a Lima prosecutor, armed with new victims’ testimonies, re-opened the criminal case against Figari that had been dismissed by another prosecutor months before.  She sought nine months’ pre-trial detention for Figari and three other Sodalicio leaders – Virgilio Levaggi, Jeffery Daniels, and Daniel Beltran Murguía. Rather than sexual abuse, she charged them with criminal conspiracy and causing serious psychological harm – charges that had not yet prescribed.

In the meantime, victims of Figari and other Sodalicio leaders testified to the Congress’s investigating commission. One victim said that Figari had sodomized him repeatedly, justifying it as a spiritual technique. Another said that Figari had shown him pornography. Yet another said Figari had forced him to undress and re-enact a sexual act.

The commission concluded that Figari was both a perpetrator and an enabler: he had committed sexual, physical and psychological abuse, and he had been complicit in similar abuses perpetrated by Virgilio Levaggi, Jeffery Daniels, and Germán Doig.

Figari consistently denied everything, calling himself innocent and refusing to appear before the congressional inquiry.

In January 2018, Pope Francis ordered the Vatican to take control of the Sodalicio’s governance. In July 2023, Francis dispatched Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu to investigate abuses within the group. The two gathered testimonies from victims, current and former Sodalicio leaders, and journalists who had exposed the group’s wrongdoing. Their report, issued in late 2023, spurred further action by the Vatican.

In August 2024, the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life expelled Figari from the Sodalicio. The Peruvian bishops’ conference stated that the Vatican had found Figari guilty of abuses. In September 2024, the Vatican expelled 10 other prominent Sodalits from the group, including Archbishop José Eguren, two priests, and seven laymen.  

In January 2025, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had decided to permanently dissolve the organization. His decree was officially enacted on April 14, 2025, days before his death.

The Church’s forceful action was long overdue. Former Peru bishop Reinaldo Nann notes in his book, ¿Cueva de abusadores o iglesia segura?: Los abusos sexuales contra menores en la iglesia peruana y su futura prevención” that victims’ complaints had been presented to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Lima since the early 2000s. Victims say that they never received information about the disposition of their cases and that no action was taken against their abusers.

In March 2026, investigative reporter Paola Ugaz obtained a face-to-face interview with Figari, aged 78, at a church-run nursing home in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. She reported that he was living in comfort.

“Figari lives peacefully in his gilded exile because the justice system in Peru stopped pursuing the case in which he was being investigated as the leader of an abusive and sectarian organization,” she said.

In May 2026, Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu and his team overseeing the Sodalitium’s dissolution process returned to Lima to hear victims’ accounts. In their first five days of work, they received more than 100 reports of abuse, including sexual abuse. Bertomeu said he had heard from victims “who do not know where to begin to explain all the trauma that belonging” to the Sodalitium has generated for them. In an interview later that month, he said that in their final ten days of gathering testimonies, an additional 142 victims had come forward.