Pope Francis expelled 10 people - a bishop, priests and laypeople - from the Sodalitium, a Catholic movement centered in Peru, on Wednesday after the Vatican uncovered "sadistic" abuses within the movement.
Abuse has long been prevalent in religious institutions like the Catholic Church, something that Francis has previously spoken out against, expressing "shame" for it.
The Peruvian Bishops Conference posted a statement from the Vatican embassy on its website Wednesday that attributed the expulsions within the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), or Sodalitium of Christian Life, to a "special" decision from Francis.
The Vatican found 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" in the SVC, according to its statement.
The investigation—carried out by the Vatican's top sex crimes investigators Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith - involved harassing and hacking the communications of the Sodalitium clergy's victims while covering up crimes committed as part of their official duties, the statement said.
The highest-ranking person ordered to be expelled by the Pope was Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren. Francis had already forced Eguren to resign as bishop of Piura in April.
The Associated Press (AP) did not get an immediate response when requesting comment from SCV.
These abuses rarely, if ever, have been punished in accordance with canon law (the body of laws within the Roman Catholic Church). This statement by the Vatican is also unusual since it gave the names of the people the Pope held responsible for the abuses.
The Vatican embassy explained the reasoning behind the expulsions in its statement: "To take such a disciplinary decision, consideration was given to the scandal that was produced by the number and gravity of the abuses that were denounced by victims, which are particularly contrary to the balanced and liberating experience of the evangelical councils."
The pope's recent decision follows his choice last month to expel the Sodalitium's founder, Luis Figari, after an external investigation found that Firgari sodomized his recruits. Figari founded the SCV in 1971 as a lay community to recruit "soldiers for God." The group peaked at roughly 20,000 members across South America, with it being incredibly big in Peru and the United States.
Figari's victims reported his abuses to the Lima archdiocese in 2011 but other claims against him reportedly date back to 2000. Neither the local church nor the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church and the Vatican - took real action until one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, wrote a tell-all 2015 book, titled Half Monks, Half Soldiers, with journalist Paola Ugaz.
An external investigation order by Sodalitium published in 2017 found that Figari was "narcissistic, paranoid, demeaning, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist and obsessed with sexual issues and the sexual orientation" of the group's members.
"It is a demonstration that in Peru, the survivors would never have found justice and reparation (without Bertomeo and Scicluna) because the Sodalitium is an organization with a lot of political, social and economic power," Ugaz told The Associated Press (AP) in reaction to the explosions.
Salinas told the AP that the expulsions are "very good news after 24 years of impunity," however, he said that the group should be dissolved entirely and that some top figures were not included on the list.
"It is to be hoped that this historic and memorable news is only the first of more, perhaps more impactful than what we know today," Salinas said.
The Peruvian bishops joined Francis in "seeking the forgiveness of the victims" and called on the SCV to initiate a path toward justice and reparation, according to the Vatican's statement.