Pope expels a bishop and 9 other people from a Peru movement over ‘sadistic’ abuses

Pope Francis took the unusual decision Wednesday to expel 10 people – a bishop, priests and laypeople – from a troubled Catholic movement in Peru after a Vatican investigation uncovered “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality.

Pope Francis took the unusual decision Wednesday to expel 10 people – a bishop, priests and laypeople – from a troubled Catholic movement in Peru after a Vatican investigation uncovered “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality. The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed Francis’ decision last month to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, after he was found to have sodomized his recruits. It was announced by the Peruvian Bishops Conference, which posted a statement from the Vatican embassy on its website. The statement was astonishing because it listed abuses uncovered by the Vatican investigation that have rarely if ever been punished canonically — such as hacking someone’s communications — and cited the people the pope held responsible. The move is likely to be welcomed by some of the victims who spoke to CNN earlier this year and had urged the Vatican to take serious measures against the perpetrators after decades of impunity. According to the statement, the Vatican investigators uncovered physical abuses “including with sadism and violence,” sect-like abuses of conscience, spiritual abuse, abuses of authority, economic abuses in administering church money and the “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism.”