Peru Catholic leaders hold reparation ceremony for Tallán land victims

The highest ecclesiastical authorities in Peru held a symbolic reparation ceremony on Saturday for Indigenous people whose land was taken by a now dissolved Catholic group, with a senior Vatican official publicly asking for forgiveness on behalf of the church.

The ceremony took place in Catacaos, a northern community in Peru, before members of the Tallán Indigenous group. Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, the apostolic commissioner who oversaw the dissolution of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, addressed a packed church. “We are here to ask for your forgiveness in the name of the Church,” he said. “We are late. We should have come 20 years ago, and we are truly sorry.”

The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae was founded in 1971 as a conservative Catholic society that grew influential in Peru and across South America and the United States, counting about 20,000 members at its peak. The group was dissolved in 2025 by the late Pope Francis after a Vatican investigation uncovered sexual abuses by its founder, financial mismanagement by its leaders, and spiritual abuses by its top members. Complaints about abuses by founder Luis Figari were raised as early as 2011, but concrete action only...