Truck circulates in Mexico City with message against indoctrinating schoolchildren

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ACI Prensa Staff, Jul 31, 2023 / 10:30 am (CNA).
In the ongoing investigation in Bolivia into sexual abuse allegedly committed by priests and male religious, mostly Jesuits, the local prosecutor’s office ha… […]

Lima, Peru, Feb 20, 2017 / 11:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The head of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae on Friday turned over to Peru’s Office of the Public Prosecutor the information identified in a recent report on the community regarding the sexual abuse of minors by its founder and by four of its former members.

Alessandro Moroni Llabres, superior general of the Sodalits, went to the public prosecutor’s office Feb. 17 “to make available to the authorities all the information in reference to the cases of the sexual abuse of minors identified in the investigation by international experts,” the community announced.

After handing over the report, Moroni stated: “we are continuing to seek out the truth. We are asking for your prayers for this work in a special way for the victims and all those who are suffering.”

The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is a society of apostolic life which was founded in 1971 in Peru, and granted pontifical recognition in 1997. CNA’s executive director, Alejandro Bermúdez, and its global director of operations, Ryan Thomas, are both members of the community.

A two-part report made public Feb. 14 detailed sexual, physical and psychological abuses committed by members of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, both those who have left the community and those who remain in it.

In addition to the movement’s founder, Luis Fernando Figari, four other Sodalits were reported to have sexually abused minors. The report named the other offenders, none of whom are still part of the community. These abuses occurred between 1975 and 2007.

Seven of the Sodalits “who were identified as having physically or psychologically abused” another member or a person in formation are still in the community and performing external ministry. They have had administrative actions taken against them and are receiving training. The report did not give their names. The instances of physical and psychological abuse occurred between 1971 and 2010, the report stated.

The reports were authored by Kathleen McChesney of Kinsale Management Consulting; Monica Applewhite of Confianza, LLC; and Ian Elliott of Ian Elliott Safeguarding.

“It is the professional opinion of the reviewers that the incidents of abuse described in this report occurred,” the report noted. “However, this opinion does not represent an investigatory conclusion, nor does it constitute the findings of a legal or canonical proceeding.”

In 2015, an apostolic visitor was appointed to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, and an ethics commission was created to investigate and offer proposals surrounding the accusations of abuse against Figari. The following year, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark was appointed the Vatican’s delegate to oversee ongoing reform of the Sodalits.

In January the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae announced that 66 persons can be considered victims of abuse or mistreatment by members of the community, and that it has set aside more than $2.8 million in reparations and assistance for victims. Figari was also barred from contacting members of the community.

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Mexico City, Mexico, Dec 6, 2019 / 10:42 pm (CNA).- Our Lady of Guadalupe is the true Lady of the Amazon, a leading expert on the apparition said, pointing to Pope John Paul II’s recognition of Our Lady of Guadalupe as Queen of all the Americas.

Fr. Eduardo Chávez is the director of the Major Institute of Guadalupan Studies and the postulator for the cause for the canonization of Saint Juan Diego. He told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, that Our Lady of Guadalupe “takes nothing from syncretism, what she does is a perfect inculturation, as Saint John Paul II says” in his 1999 apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America.

In the Guadalupe Basilica on January 23, 1999, by placing Ecclesia in America at the feet of the Virgin, he said, Saint John Paul II underscored that Our Lady of Guadalupe is “Mother and Queen of this Continent” and took the title used years prior in the Synod for America: “Patroness of all the Americas and Star of the First and New Evangelization.”

On that day, Saint John Paul II said that Our Lady of Guadalupe knows “the paths followed by the first evangelizers of the New World, from Guanahani Island and Hispaniola to the jungles of Amazonia and Andean peaks, reaching Tierra del Fuego in the South and the Great Lakes and mountains of the North.”

Chávez emphasized that for almost 500 years, the Virgin of Guadalupe has been “perfectly well known as the patroness of the entire American Continent.”

“She brings Jesus Christ Our Lord,” the priest said. “She brings the truth which is Jesus Christ, and puts it in the heart of every human being, over and above cultures, traditions and languages.”

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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