Author: Paola Ugaz
Conclave In Latin it means key, cum clavis. The concept refers to the practice of eight centuries ago where the cardinals of the Catholic Church are enclosed and the mobiles are removed until they choose the successor of the Pope, who combines in the same quantity, political and spiritual power. These days, actor Ralph Fiennes stars the film of the same name that competes for the Oscar and shows the intrigues to choose the Pope’s successor. What happens in the Fiennes film is a minimal sample of what moves around the clergy in Peru since the beginning of 2025, which has Lima as the epicenter of decisions and will define the legacy of Pope Francis.
Pope Francis’s decision to close the Sodalicio de Vida (SCV) and its branches has uncovered an economic framework leading the priest Jaime Baertl from Colombia and a cover -up network that went from Lima to Rome where religious authorities such as Cardinals such as Cardinals were Emeritus Juan Luis Cipriani; the mayor of Lima, Rafael López Aliaga; and the former Minister of Health, Hernán Garrido Lecca.
The financial structure
The basic structure of the financial scheme was very similar to Opus Dei in regard to having goods not in the name of the institution but in third parties. On the one hand, there is the San Juan Bautista Civil Association (ACSJB), not lucrative and owner of the 9 cemeteries, among other goods, and on the other hand, lucrative organizations such as investments San José. For example, the missions obtain capital for the funeral activities they carry out using the benefits of the concordat. Then, ACSJB, which is a non -profit organization, transfers profits (which reach millions of suns or dollars) to legal persons linked to sodalicio. This is done through the simulation of operations that can subsequently justify the absence of return of said money to the coffers of the missions.
These money transfers through alleged loans end up disappearing because – Oh Milagro! – the company has a credit in favor of ACSJB for the same amount of the money that it gives. This is how the money of the cemeteries does not reach any charitable or social port, but to the pockets of the chosen ones.
Those who handle the Sodalicio Sa that I was going from now from Colombia, the priest Jaime Baertl, are Mario Rivarola Moran, Ary Alcán Tara, Gonzalo Flores Santana, Miguel Angel Díaz, Renzo Bacigalupo, Pedro Komatsudani, the Chilean Juan José Cueto Plaza and the Sodálites Juan Carlos Len, Javier Len, Gonzalo Len, Carlos Neuenschwander, José Antonio Am Brozic and José Antonio Dávila.
Complaints and resignations
The unpublished announcement of the suppression of the sodalicio has removed the tectonic layers of the Catholic Church in Peru, since since that day they have not stopped happening changes, complaints and resignations: the true reasons of the exile of Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani were revealed; The “resignation” of the former president of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, Miguel Cabrejos, was accepted and a process whose outcome is not yet written: the destiny of the assets of the sodalicio and the attention to their dozens of victims began.
How did the power of the sodalicio work? To show several buttons: the ”Valkiria operation” of November 2023 directed by the prosecutor Marita Barreto, today removed, revealed that the lawyer of the Sodalicio, José Luis Hauyón, and the former Minister of Health, Hernán Garrido Lecca, moved in the Shadows as advisors of the former nation prosecutor, Patricia Benavides, and asked that the organization not be investigated. Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani received three complaints against Luis Fernando Figari and made them disappear. And finally, the former president of the Episcopal Conference, Miguel Cabrejos, did not know how to explain to Pope Francis the actions he took before the complaints of the victims of the sodalicio: he only presented nine communiqués on the subject published in the last ten years.
Bertomeu in Aparecida
In the Digital Religion portal, directed He held the last assembly of the Sodalicio, from January 6 to 31, directed by Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirland. There he held an encounter on January 22 before more than a hundred surprised members of the organization to answer questions such as hope for us?
Also according to digital religion, Bertomeu met in the Nunciature of Lima with the priest and de facto chief of the Sodalicio, Jaime Baertl. This meeting took sparks because according to the expelled member of the sodalicio, the journalist Alejandro Bermúdez, “Bertomeu goes after the silver of the sodalicio.”
The history of the end of the Sodalicio in Peru is a mixture of the scripts of the Spot Light (2015) films by Thomas McCarthy and Conclave (2024) by Edward Berger. Namely, in 2000, appears the first complainant of the organization, José Enrique Escardó; In 2001, the first report was broadcast on the Entrelínea television program that Cecilia Valenzuela led and showed by the drama of two parents, Eduardo Alt and Héctor Guillén, who denounced the kidnapping of their children at the hands of the sodalicio; In 2015, half monks were published, half soldiers of Pedro Salinas and who writes.
Then in 2016, in The Republic The first reports of the financial management of the Sodalicio were published. And as of 2018, judicial persecution and in the media of the misinformer ecosystem against Salinas began, who writes and Daniel Yovera. No resources were skimmed to raise an identical scaffolding to the one directed by the convicted former head of the secret services, Vladimiro Montesinos, where the investigators became investigated.
In these misinformation operations, books were published that sought to discredit journalists Pedro Salinas and Daniel Yovera, while hired feathers as of experimentists Miguel Ramírez, José Rosales, Mariella Balbi, Umberto Jara, among others, to point out that The inquiries about the sodalicio had no livelihood and their researchers should be in jail. The services of former press chief of former president Alberto Fujimori and his daughter Keiko Sofía, Carlos Raffo, who converted the crisis into a campaign of perpetual denial because they trusted the support of the Popular Force Party were also hired.
The political power of the Sodalicio of Christian life does not stop there. The businessman who became politic Sodalicio operating with the Parque del Memro brand, so that they are not reached by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Vatican.
Francisco ordered that in July 2023, the special mission formed by the bishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, and the Monsignor Jor Di Bertomeu, come to Peru. The arrival of the special mission to the Nunciature of Lima meant a decisive change for the sodalicio, which for more than 50 years had grown at coasts of the concor data signed between Peru and the Vatican and that kneaded a fortune, which at its most famous moment , reached $ 1000 million.
Already back in the Vatica no, the Scicluna-Bertomeu duo was in charge of the departure of the Spanish José Rodríguez of the Dicastery of the sodalicio; of the “resignation” of the sodálite José Antonio Eguren as Bishop of Piura and Tumbes; and the expelies of Luis Fernando Figari, Rafael Imismo Des, Luis Ferrogiaro, Humberto del Castillo, Daniel Cardó, Óscar Tokumura, Rafael Imism Fo Trenemann, Juan Carlos Len, Jaime Baertl and Eguren himself.
Sum of factors
What did that for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church close a whole family of organizations and communities that were founded by the Peruvian Luis Fernando Figari? It was a process that was sustained in a journalistic investigation and in the DNA of a sodalicio that has made the matoneo and the judicial persecution a registered trademark since he denounced and conducted campaigns of enloding against the religious who investigated them inside and outside the Vatican.
The sum of all these reasons moved the needle so that Pope Francis decides and orders the suppression that will be signed by the prefect of the Dicasterio for the Institutes of Life Consecra da and the societies of Apostolic Life, Simona Brambilla. That a woman firm the closure of a misogynist organization is a poetic justice.
