The Pope expels a Denver priest and 9 others from the Catholic movement in Peru

Pope Francis took the unusual step this week of expelling 10 people — including a priest leading a Denver church — from the troubled Catholic movement in Peru that has strong ties to Colorado. This decision was made after a Vatican investigation revealed the “sadism” of abuse of power, authority and spirituality.

The move against the leadership of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed Francis’ decision last month to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, after it was discovered that he had sodomized his recruits.

The Peruvian Episcopal Conference posted on its website a statement from the Vatican embassy in which it attributes the expulsions to a “special” decision made by Francis.

The statement was astonishing because it listed abuses uncovered by the Vatican investigation that were rarely, if ever, punished canonically – such as hacking into someone’s communications – and listed the people the pope had held accountable.

According to the statement, Vatican investigators detected physical abuses “including sadism and violence”, abuses of conscience of a sect-like nature, spiritual abuses, abuses of power, economic abuses in the management of church funds and “abuses in the exercise of apostolate” journalism.

Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is based in Peru but has strong ties to Colorado through the Archdiocese of Denver.

In 2003, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver invited Sodalitium to establish the first community in the United States at Camp Saint Malo, a retreat center in Allenspark. In 2010, Chaput entrusted Sodalitium with Holy Name Catholic Parish in Sheridan, where the group is now headquartered.

“Thanks to the beauty of nature, apostolic initiatives have emerged in the Colorado mountains that seek reconciliation with creation through hikes, camps, retreats and conferences,” Sodalitium says on its website.

The community’s parish priest, Father Daniel Cardó, was one of 10 people expelled by Francis in Wednesday’s landmark decision. The pope expelled three other people with ties to Colorado.

According to his online biography, Cardó was born in Lima and was ordained a priest in 2006. In 2007, he moved to Denver, where he became chaplain at Saint Malo, and then in 2010, he was appointed parish priest at Holy Name Parish. He also serves as chaplain for Christ in the City, a Catholic nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the poor.

The specific reasons for his expulsion from Sodalitium were not given.

Cardó, through the Archdiocese of Denver, declined to be interviewed by The Denver Post. He told parishioners in an email that he was “very sad and shocked by this news” but “there are no allegations of any wrongdoing.”

The Archdiocese of Denver said in a statement that it was “shocked and saddened by the news of the expulsions,” which it attributes to “allegations dating back decades in South America.”

“While the Archdiocese is actively working to understand the full scope of the Vatican’s investigation, we cannot comment on specifics,” the statement said. “This news is inconsistent with our decades of experience with men who have served in the Archdiocese of Denver.”

The statement said Cardó “has served nobly and faithfully in Colorado for 17 years.”

“During his stay here, Fr. Cardó has not faced any disciplinary action against him,” the archdiocese said. “He is loved by his parishioners and respected in the community.”

Despite the pope’s order, Cardó remains a priest in good standing “although he was expelled from the community to which he belonged,” the Archdiocese of Denver said in an email to The Post, adding that there was no indication of serious misconduct.

“The Vatican decree, which we fully support, has an internal canonical impact regarding his membership in a religious community, not his suitability to serve as a priest,” the archdiocese wrote. “Again, there is no indication that a canonical or civil offense has occurred.”

Three other expelled members have ties to Denver:

• Eduardo Regal, executive director of Christ in the City and “supervisor” or leader of the Denver-based Sodalitium community
• José Ambrozic, former superior of the community in Denver, now living in Philadelphia
• Alejandro Bermúdez, journalist and former executive director of the Catholic News Agency. His current company, Tilma Strategies LLC, is based in Englewood, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Regal, Ambrozic and Bermúdez could not be reached for comment.

But in a YouTube video posted Thursday, Bermúdez called his expulsion unjustified and said he planned to approach the next pope on the matter.

“I will never stop being a sodalite,” he said. “I will die a Sodalite.”

The Archdiocese of Denver said Regal and Bermúdez “have served faithfully and distinguishedly in the Archdiocese of Denver, and the findings against them are, to say the least, deeply disappointing.”

The “narcissistic and paranoid” founder investigated

Figari founded the SCV, as it is known, in 1971 as a lay community aimed at recruiting “soldiers for God.” It was one of several Catholic associations that emerged as a conservative reaction to the leftist liberation theology movement that swept across Latin America beginning in the 1960s.

At its peak, the group had approximately 20,000 members in South America and the United States. This had a huge impact on Peru.

Victims of Figari’s abuse filed a complaint with the Archdiocese of Lima in 2011, although other claims against him are reported to date back to 2000. However, neither the local church nor the Holy See took concrete action until one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, wrote a book with journalist Paola Ugaz detailing Sodalitium’s twisted practices in 2015, titled “Half Monks, Half Soldiers.”

An external investigation commissioned by Sodalitium later found that Figari was a “narcissistic, paranoid, degrading, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist and obsessed with sexual issues and sexual orientation” members of Sodalitium.

An investigation published in 2017 found that Figari sodomized his recruits and forced them to fondle him and each other. The report said he enjoyed watching them “experience pain, discomfort and fear” and would humiliate them in front of others to increase his control over them.

Despite this, the Holy See in 2017 refused to expel Figari from the movement and only ordered him to live away from the Sodalitium community in Rome and cease all contacts with it. The Vatican was apparently bound by canon law, which provided no such penalties for founders of religious communities who were not priests. The victims were outraged.

But according to the findings of the latest Vatican investigation, the abuses went beyond Figari. According to the statement, they included Sodalitium clergy and harassed and hacked the communications of their victims, all while concealing crimes committed in the course of their official duties.

“Political, social and economic power”

The investigation was conducted by the Vatican’s top sex crimes investigators, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who traveled to Lima last year to hear testimony from victims.

The highest-ranking person ordered expelled was Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren, whom Francis had already forced to resign as bishop of Piura in April over his record after suing Salinas and Ugaz over their reporting.

Journalist Ugaz welcomed the expulsions and said the mention of the Sodalitium hack referred to her: She said her communications were hacked in 2023, after she reported on Sodalitium’s overseas holdings and other financial transactions, and stated that she believed the group was trying to identify its sources.