LIMA, Peru — After years of allegations of land dispossession by a now-dissolved Catholic group, the best ecclesiastical authorities in the Andean nation on Saturday held a symbolic reparation ceremony for the Indigenous folks whose land was taken away.
The Peru-based Sodalitium Christianae Vitae was dissolved din 2025 by the late Pope Francis, after years of makes an attempt at reform and a Vatican investigation that uncovered sexual abuses by its founder, monetary mismanagement by its leaders and religious abuses by its prime members.
The ceremony in Peru came about earlier than the Indigenous folks of Tallán, in the northern group of Catacaos.
“We’re right here to ask for your forgiveness in the identify of the Church,” Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, apostolic commissioner who was in cost of the dissolution technique of the Sodalitium, mentioned earlier than a packed church. “We’re late. We must always have come 20 years in the past, and we’re really sorry.”
The Sodalitium was based in 1971 as certainly one of a number of Catholic societies born as a conservative response to the left-leaning liberation theology motion that swept by means of Latin America in the Nineteen Sixties. At its top, the group counted about 20,000 members throughout South America and the US, and was vastly influential in Peru.
In 2011, former members complained to the archdiocese in Peru’s capital, Lima, about abuses by its founder, Luis Figari. However neither the native church nor the Holy See took concrete motion till one of many victims and a journalist wrote a e book in 2015.
After an try at reform, Francis despatched his two most trusted investigators, Bertomeu and Archbishop Charles Scicluna, to look into the Sodalitium abuse allegations. Their report uncovered “sadistic” sect-like abuses of energy and spirituality, monetary abuses in administering church funds and even situations of harassing critics.
Throughout Saturday’s ceremony, Bertomeu recalled a message Francis despatched to the group in 2024, telling them: “Battle for your lands, I’m with you.”
The land disputes date again not less than a decade, to when Sodalitium-linked firms started authorized motion to evict folks from 1000’s of hectares in Catacaos following a number of property transfers that aren’t acknowledged by the farmers. Dozens of farmers have been prosecuted for alleged “usurpation,” and two group leaders have been shot and killed throughout clashes stemming from the eviction efforts.
The non secular ceremony came about months after the Peruvian Episcopal Convention introduced a doable go to by Pope Leo XIV to the South American nation on the finish of the 12 months.
“Forgive us, supply us your forgiveness, as a result of we too want it,” mentioned Bertomeu, who described Catacaos as a group “fearful and damaged.”
Tania Pariona, secretary of Peru’s Nationwide Human Rights Fee, mentioned the ceremony was a “historic gesture” in which the church “is taking the lead over the state, which has failed to guard rural communities.”
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