By Eduardo Berdejo
ACI Prensa Team, January 20, 2025 / 5:20 p.m.
The Sodality of Christian Life confirmed Monday that Pope Francis has decided to dissolve the society of apostolic life, without going into further detail on how the process will take place.
The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV, by its Latin acronym) published a press release following the news published on Saturday by Infovaticana, according to which Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda had announced the dissolution to its members gathered for the general assembly which is taking place in Aparecida, in Brazil. .
The general assembly began on January 6 and will end on January 31. Ghirlanda participates as a consultant for the process of revising the constitutions of the Sodalitium and is its training delegate, a task entrusted to him by the Vatican in 2019.
In its statement on Monday, the SCV said: “On January 18 of this year, the website ‘Infovaticana’ published the news that the Holy Father had dissolved our society of apostolic life. The main information about what happened was true, but it contained several inaccuracies.
In its text, Sodalitium does not indicate what the inaccuracies are but specifies that the leak to the press of this “confidential” information does not come from Ghirlanda but from two members of the congregation who violated “the confidentiality of the file” and who were excluded from the assembly.
“The assembly only recognizes as its own the news of its official communications; therefore, the assembly dissociates itself from all other news coming out or that may come out of the press concerning the assembly, the Sodalitium, the Holy Father, in whom we trust and whom we obey, to Mgr. Jordi Bertomeu Farnós, and to Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, SJ,” said the SCV.
According to Infovaticana, the decree of dissolution “refers to the immorality of the founder, Luis Fernando Figari, as an indication of the non-existence of a founding charism, and therefore the lack of ecclesial legitimacy for the permanence of the institution.”
Figari was expelled from the SCV by Pope Francis in August 2024. The Holy See had already sanctioned him in 2017 and banned him from having contact with any member of this society after it was proven that he had committed sexual abuse and abuse of power.
According to Infovaticano, the Vatican has appointed Bertomeu, member of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, as commissioner responsible for the dissolution process. The Spanish priest was part of the special mission that the pontiff sent to Peru in July 2023 to investigate the accusations against Sodalitium members.
SCV was founded in Lima, Peru in 1971 and currently also has a presence in Italy, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It was translated and adapted by CNA.
Eduardo Berdejo holds a degree in journalism from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru). He has been a member of the ACI Prensa team since 2001. He covered the visits of Pope Francis to Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Peru. He also holds a degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Piura (Peru) and completed the complete style correction course at the Publishing School of Lima (Peru).
