Aharon Andrés Cardona joined the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae as a teenager in Colombia in 1993 because he wanted to help others.
The secretive Catholic society, based in Peru, sought to mold upper-class, fair-skinned boys into “soldiers for God” through a combination of military-style training and theological study.
Cardona said he soon realized, however, that his mission to help others would come with years of physical and psychological abuse.
When he said or did something that his superiors didn’t like, the leader of his community, Daniel Cardó, now the priest of a Colorado parish, punched him repeatedly in the stomach or slapped him in the face, Cardona said in an interview from Colombia.
“He said I needed to act like a man,” he said.
Cardona and his comrades were constantly pushed to their physical limits through running, swimming, squats and pushups. Some threw up or fainted from overexertion, he said. They slept only a few hours a night. Punishments included eating only lettuce and water for days at a time.
“The institution has a logic to humiliate people and to demand from them a lot of obedience,” Cardona said. “They shouldn’t exist anymore.”
Pope Francis made waves in September when he expelled 10 members — including Father Cardó and two others with Colorado ties — from the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae for what the Vatican called “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality. The pope’s decision rocked the group, which has been under investigation by authorities from Peru and the Vatican, as well as its own leadership, in recent years.
Over the past 25 years, the Sodalitium has established a strong presence in Colorado, where the Archdiocese of Denver entrusted it with a metro-area parish, and where the group has moved several high-ranking leaders along with some of its financial operations.
“All the money is in Denver,” said Paola Ugaz, an investigative reporter in Peru who wrote a book on abuses in the Sodalitium. “Their power is in Denver right now.”
Former members who lived in the Denver community described similar physical and psychological tests in which leaders pushed them beyond their breaking point.
Despite the expulsion from the Sodalitium, Cardó remains a member of the Catholic Church and the pastor at the Holy Name Catholic Church in Sheridan. He declined interview requests for this story, but wrote in an email that he remembers the events with Cardona “very differently.”
“I was never expected or instructed to use violence,” Cardó wrote. “What some have described was not my experience.”
The Archdiocese of Denver, in a statement last month following the Pope’s announcement, defended the expelled members, saying the allegations centered on decades-old claims from South America. Cardó remains a priest in good standing, the Archdiocese said, though he no longer lives with the Sodalitium community on the church’s property.
A protest banner that shows an image of Pope Francis and Luis Figari, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae founder — with a message that reads in Spanish, “Francisco, here we do have proof” — hangs from a building seen along Francis’ motorcade, in Lima, Peru, …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
