How Pope Leo dealt with years of abuse allegations in a powerful Catholic society in Peru

As a missionary and bishop in Peru, the future Pope Leo came face-to-face with one of the most serious and far-reaching scandals in the church in Latin America.

As a missionary and bishop in Peru, the future Pope Leo came face-to-face with one of the most serious and far-reaching scandals in the church in Latin America. For years, there were allegations of abuse within the hugely influential Catholic society Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), which had deep ties to Peru’s powerful and wealthy. The scandal came to a head in 2015, the year after Leo, then known as Robert Prevost, was appointed bishop in the northern city of Chiclayo. A book written by one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, with journalist Paola Ugaz, “Half Monks, Half Soldiers,” described alleged beatings, humiliation and sexual assault in stark detail from 30 anonymous victims that enflamed the country. Several survivors in Peru, Ugaz and a Vatican source closely involved in the case told CNN that Leo’s eventual intervention – after a key meeting in 2019 and a crucial promotion in Rome – is what finally kicked the Church into taking dramatic action. When Oscar Osterling formally joined SCV in 1992, he was instructed not to tell his parents about his loyalty oath – a secrecy that appealed to the then-teenager. He would go on to spend more than two decades with SCV, only breaking out in his mid-thirties as the first allegations began to surface. Founded in 1971 in Peru as a lay group, the Sodalitium was politically driven as a fight back against the rise of liberation theology in Latin America, a radical movement which began in the 1960s and focused on supporting the poor. The society controlled several communities and ran religious schools in the southern part of the country, its members and students mostly drawn from the country’s elite.