CultNEWS101 Articles: 8/27/2025

Nine O'Clock Service, Neuroscience of Religion, Peru, Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, Legal, Sexual Abuse

BBC: Ex-priest found guilty of 17 indecent assaults

"A former priest accused of abusing members of a "cult-like" church group he led has been found guilty of 17 counts of indecent assault against nine women.

Chris Brain, 68, was head of the Nine O'Clock Service (NOS), an influential evangelical movement based in Sheffield in the 1980s and 90s.

Brain, of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, was convicted of the charges following a trial at Inner London Crown Court.

He was found not guilty of another 15 charges of indecent assault, while jurors are continuing to deliberate on a further four counts of indecent assault and one charge of rape."

" ... The NOS began in Sheffield in 1986 and was initially celebrated by Church of England leaders for its nightclub-style services, which attracted hundreds of young people.

The Church fast-tracked Brain's ordination as a priest in 1991 due to the success of the NOS, with jurors told the group spent "large sums of money" to obtain robes worn by the actor Robert De Niro in the film The Mission for Brain to wear in his ordination ceremony.

In the early 1990s the NOS moved to the city's Ponds Forge leisure centre in order to accommodate the growing congregation.

But prosecutors told the jury NOS "became a cult" in which Brain abused his position to sexually assault "a staggering number" of women from his congregation.

The group was dissolved in 1995 when concerns about Brain's behaviour were first raised.

The jury heard Brain later admitted in a BBC documentary, aired the same year, to having "improper sexual conduct with a number of women".

He resigned his holy orders two days before the programme was broadcast."

Patheos: The Real Neuroscience of Religion – Doing Drugs in Church

" ... In the 1980s, Nancy Reagan encouraged us to say no to drugs, but some chemicals are produced inside our bodies, not ingested. When we get excited at concerts or we feel love and acceptance from our relationships, our bodies release pleasurable chemicals. Other chemicals occur naturally to protect us, like stress hormones. We often even experience these types of chemicals in church.[1]

Our cortisol levels tend to be lower when we pray, meditate, or even just breathe. Cortisol is the stress hormone often linked to belly fat. Elevated cortisol levels also contribute to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, depression, and a weakened immune system. Chronic stress levels decline during certain church activities, though they can also be elevated during other parts of the experience. Prolonged high cortisol levels from chronic stress can harm the brain, raise the risk of heart problems, and weaken the immune system.

My main concern with religious practices and this chemical is that church services now seem designed to trigger this stress hormone intentionally.

We might call it conviction, accountability, or rebuke. Still, sometimes these practices increase our cortisol levels and then quickly lead us to use things like prayer to bring us back down, reducing the cortisol again. My issue is that these chemicals are meant to protect us from real danger and shouldn't be used as tools to dysregulate us, so we feel regulated shortly afterward. The damage is still done, even if we feel better after leaving the church.

It's almost like someone punches us in the arm, then rubs it to make it feel better, and afterward looks to us for approval.

What about serotonin and dopamine? Practices like group singing, prayer, and worship trigger the release of this "feel-good" hormone that creates feelings of happiness and well-being. The same neurotransmitters are also activated during other pleasurable experiences. They are released whenever we feel good, even from harmful activities like overeating, using drugs, and taking risks.

Chemicals motivate us to keep coming back because we want to feel that high. Even if it is just the high of righteousness from attending religious services, we experience these pleasurable hormones and crave them again, so we return, keep eating, or use more of what produces that feeling.

Someone once said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." We rely on these chemicals to motivate us to get our next meal, seek safety, and enjoy life. However, in my opinion, religion often creates a high and a co-dependency where we feel like we are forever "chasing the dragon" of our learned co-dependence and our addiction to the chemical high."

RNS: Pope Leo abuse case in Peru muddled by language, cultural barriers

"A Peruvian woman who says she was sexually abused by two priests as a girl traveled to Pope Leo XIV's hometown of Chicago in late July to personally tell the media her claims of how the newly elected pope mishandled her case when he served as bishop of Chiclayo, Peru.

Organized by The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the July 31 press conference was the first time Ana María Quispe Díaz, whose story has been amplified by advocates and rehashed in the media, spoke for herself since Leo's election.

Quispe Díaz told reporters she first met with Leo, then-Bishop Robert Prevost, in 2022 to report two priests that she and other Chiclayo women claimed abused them as girls. Initially, she said, Prevost encouraged her to report the abuse to civil authorities, but, according to Quispe Díaz, he later failed to properly investigate, remove the accused priests from ministry or provide adequate support for survivors.

Despite Prevost's initial posture of support, Quispe Díaz claimed he told her there was no way to carry out a church investigation and that they must rely on the civil system. She said Prevost and other diocesan leaders did not approach the situation with transparency and did not take sufficient actions against the accused priests, the Revs. Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles and Ricardo Yesquén Paiva.

SNAP, a survivor-run advocacy group based in the U.S., said they organized the conference to give Quispe Díaz a platform to tell her story to English-speaking media. However, a Spanish-to-English translator hired by SNAP for the press conference made several translation errors that altered the meaning of Quispe Díaz's words.

"We were listened to and encouraged to report what happened to us," said Quispe Díaz in Spanish at the press conference. "We reported exactly what happened to us," the translator incorrectly said in English.

"We were mistreated by those representatives of Christ who, by faith, we call fathers," she said in Spanish at the press conference. "We have been denied representation of Jesus Christ who through faith we call father," the interpreter mistranslated.

Sarah Pearson, spokesperson for SNAP, told RNS she had hired CBS translation for the first time based on Google reviews, something she would not do again. Pearson is now working with another translator to dub a correct translation over the video of the event to send to reporters.

The press conference, with its serious translation errors, indicated the difficulties Quispe Díaz has faced as her story is scrutinized on an international stage — and the challenge for the international Catholic community in understanding a Peruvian abuse case that now has global implications.

Paola Ugaz, a Peruvian investigative journalist who exposed sexual abuses by the powerful Peruvian Catholic group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, told RNS Prevost's handling of the case needs to be understood within a Latin American context.

Many Latin American bishops "persecute the messenger" with threats and wouldn't encourage women to go to civil authorities as Prevost did, according to Ugaz. Prevost also sent the case to the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Ugaz believes showed he took it seriously and wanted the women to be protected. Sending the case to the Vatican is "a measure that Latin American bishops don't do because either they don't know or they want to protect priests," said Ugaz in Spanish.

Leo is credited by Sodalitium survivors as having an instrumental role in moving Pope Francis and the Vatican to suppress the group, and he has praised Ugaz's "unwavering pursuit of justice and commitment to truth" as she and another journalist have faced lawsuits, death threats, false accusations and judicial harassment.

"Unfortunately, in my country, Peru, most people who report cases of abuse do not find justice at the end of their story. The system is designed to favor the perpetrator and neglect the victim. It's a mistake to apply North American standards," said Ugaz.

The church's actions against Sodalitium, suppressing the group, only came 15 years after she began to investigate, Ugaz said, and despite over a decade of investigation into Sodalitium abuses, no perpetrators have been convicted in Peru courts.

SNAP has not reached out to Sodalitium survivors and has not included those survivors' praise for Leo in its communications. For Pearson, different global norms shouldn't mean an abuse case is dealt with any less expediently, thoroughly or safely."

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Peru Catholic society admits sex abuse probe against founder

Frank Bajak
AP
October 31, 2015


LIMA, Peru — A secretive Roman Catholic society with chapters across South America and in the U.S. has revealed under pressure that a Vatican investigator is looking into allegations that its founder sexually molested young recruits.

The scandal at the Peru-based Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium for Human Life, has close parallels to other recent cases of charismatic Catholic leaders in Latin America being accused of sex abuse — as well as the church dragging its feet on investigating claims and trying to keep scandals quiet.

This week, Sodalitium’s general secretary disclosed the Vatican investigation after two journalists published a book detailing the accusations against founder Luis Fernando Figari, 68.

Co-author Pedro Salinas, a former society member, has been publicly accusing Figari since 2010 of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. According to the book, three men lodged complaints the following year with a Peruvian church tribunal alleging Figari sexually abused them when they were minors.

There is no indication the tribunal did anything with the case, including notifying prosecutors. Nor is it known when the Vatican was advised.

Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, the conservative archbishop of Lima with jurisdiction over the tribunal, was quoted as telling the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio this week that case is “regrettable and painful” and claiming

“We have acted with absolute transparency and rapidity,” he said.

No criminal probe was opened in Peru until after the mid-October publication of “Half Monks, Half Soldiers.” Prosecutors, though, say the statute of limitations has almost certainly run out as the alleged crimes occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.

Founded in 1971, Sodalitium has a presence in schools and churches and runs retreat facilities with communities in Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Italy and the United States. Its members are mostly lay Catholics but also include clergy.

After the book’s release, the society issued three successive press releases as a public clamor for greater accountability and transparency intensified.

First, the society revealed that Figari, who is not a priest, has been living in relative isolation at a Sodalitium community in Rome since 2010 and has been out of public life and governance of the society since then. At the time of his departure as general secretary, Sodalitium said only that Figari was stepping down for health reasons.

It added that the society’s current leader, Alessandro Moroni, decided in 2014 to intensify the regime of “prayer and retreat” being followed by Figari

The statement also noted Figari wasn’t alone in being accused: The book says the society’s No. 2, the late German Doig, was accused of sexually assaulting a minor. He died in 2001. A decade later, after the allegations against him first surfaced, the society said his candidacy for beatification had been canceled.

In a second statement Oct. 21, the society said the book’s allegations were “plausible” and needed to be thoroughly investigated. It said it created a committee to hear complaints from other possible victims and asked forgiveness, calling the accusations against Figari “cause for deep grief and shame.”

It said Figari insists he is innocent, though it notes he hasn’t said so publicly.

This week, the third release disclosed that the Vatican had on April 22 named a local bishop to investigate the society. Figari departed Lima three days later for Europe, according to local published reports.

The book’s co-author, Paola Ugaz, said she and Salinas wrote in January to the Vatican office in charge of apostolic church societies detailing the allegations against Figari. They never got an answer, she said. But the official to whom they wrote, Archbishop Jose Rodriguez Carballo, signed the April 22 decree.

The scandal is similar to one in Chile involving the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a charismatic priest who in 2011 was sentenced by the church to a lifetime of penance and prayer for sexually abusing young people. The local archbishop sat on allegations against Karadima for years, refusing to believe them, and only passed them on to the Vatican after the scandal exploded globally in 2010.

The case also has parallels to a scandal at the Legion of Christ, which was headed by the late Mexican priest Marcial Maciel. The Vatican under St. Pope Paul II ignored decades of credible abuse allegations against Maciel and discredited his victims. Only in 2006 did it act, giving him the same sentence as Karadima.

The Peruvian bishop assigned to the Figari probe, the Rev. Fortunato Pablo Urcey of Chota, is ordered by the decree to “verify the true authenticity of accusations” past and new against Figari and file a full report.

But Urcey, the secretary general of Peru’s council of churches, said in a radio interview this week that he didn’t consider himself an investigator as much as a supporter of Sodalitium.

In an interview with RPP radio, he said he had no plans to interview the ex-members who filed the complaints or to read the book.

“I like the designation ‘visitor’ better than ‘investigator’ because I’m not an investigator,” he said, recalling his official title as an “apostolic visitor.” Three times during the interview, Urcey said he would do all he could to “save the charism of this congregation,” a reference to the spirituality that makes it unique.

Urcey did not return phone messages left by The Associated Press. Efforts to reach a spokesman for the Lima ecclesiastic tribunal also were unsuccessful. The body’s deliberations are secret.

The society’s current leader, Moroni, said in an interview with the newspaper El Comercio this week that he contacted the tribunal about the accusations against Figari more than two years ago.

Tribunal officials responded that “they are an independent body and they didn’t have to give us any kind of information until they reached a decision,” he said.

In an article published Friday, Salinas, the co-author, urged that Moroni be removed, calling him complicit in a culture of abuse that Salinas said included Figari’s burning of his flesh with a candle flame for about a minute in front of fellow initiates.

A Peruvian non-governmental organization, the Institute for Defense of the Rights of Minors, asked prosecutors last week to investigate Cipriani, Lima’s archbishop and an Opus Dei member, for obstruction of justice.

Its president, Daniel Vega, said none of the men who filed complaints against Figari with the tribunal were ever contacted by it afterward.

“There is a recurring conduct of the cardinal and his entire team of covering up crimes and not informing the criminal justice system.”

AP Vatican correspondent Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/peru-catholic-society-admits-sex-abuse-probe-against-founder/2015/10/31/53896608-7f8a-11e5-bfb6-65300a5ff562_story.html?

Peru: New Cases of Child Abuse by Catholics Documented

Telesurtv
October 21, 2015

The head of the wealthy and powerful Catholic organization called Solidatium is involved in cases of child rape and other physical and sexual abuses. 

Journalist and author Pedro Salinas gave a press conference in Lima, the Peruvian capital, to speak of the impact his recent publication is having.

The book is titled “Half Monks, Half Soldiers” and in it Salinas documents the abuses by the Catholic cult called Sodalitium Christianae Vitae.

The publication has stirred up the organization and many sectors of the Peruvian society. Among a series of violations, the book shows five cases of child sexual abuse by leaders of the organization, including repeated rapes by the founder Luis Fernando Figari, who founded Sodalitium in Lima in 1971, and it acquired its canonical recognition from Pope John Paul II in 1977.

According to their website, Sodalitium is a “society of Apostolic Life made up of laymen and priests who live in community as brothers, and have fully given their lives to God, proclaiming the Gospel in the diverse circumstances of human life” and make commitments of “obedience and celibacy.” It operates in seven Latin American countries, the United States and Italy.

Salinas was a member of Sodalitium but quit due to their hierarchical and elitist nature and celibacy requirements. He then wrote a novel called Mateo Diez based on his experiences in the cult and claims the book was an attempt to vent his frustrations with the organization.

After writing the book, many former member of Sodalitium told him about the sexual abuses. Salinas claims that at first he did not believe those stories but things changed when the Vatican canceled the process to make a saint out of one of the founders of the organization, German Doig.

At that time, a close friend approached Salinas and told him that the process had been canceled due to cases of sexual abuse by Doig and confessed that he was one of them. Salinas then started collecting the 30 testimonials that comprise his book with the help of prominent journalist Paola Ugaz.

Four years after, they published the book. Salinas argues that  "what we have run into is the design of a vertical organization, authoritative, and totalitarian which has as it's spiritual guru a cruel, perverse, abusive, manipulative, and intelligent character who promotes the cult of personality around himself."

The five cases of sexual abuse in the book reveal a highly elaborate form of carrying out the crimes, which were through manipulative methods that took years of physical training, brainwashing children, and forcing them to distance themselves from friends and family.

One of the most repulsive stories is the one of Santiago who was told he was selected by God for something big, to change things and transform the world. He was then chosen by Figari to participate in a selected group who practiced yoga. After years of physical training, Santiago was asked by Figari if he wanted to move forward and learn the Kundalini technique.

Figari convinced Santiago that such technique involves awakening his sacrum bone through which he could obtain supernatural powers and a state of total consciousness. Figari also told Santiago that the best way to activate the sacrum bone was to deposit semen there.

“I’m going to deposit my sperm in your sacrum area” Figari reportedly told the boy. Santiago also claims that Figari asked me “to masturbate while he was penetrating me.”

The scandal has inspired many former members of Sodalitium to speak out. Martin Balbuena had been with the group for eight years, and he believes there are many good people in the organization but he thinks the leader who created the structure is deranged.

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He stated that "the idea of changing others, to do good, made me dream and got me involved more every time and I ended up becoming a member of Sodalitium. Once I was there and specially after I left that love turned into a deception."

Another former member, Jorge Ocampo, explained how he became part of a brainwashing system he called “plainly wrong.” He explained that "in the background there is a process of manipulation with kids of 15,16,17 years of age who do not know they are being analyzed to find out who their parents are, planning to  approach the boy in a particular way, telling him something, inviting  him to a BBQ and then we did a casual talk and starting to get him involved."

Cases have been filed denouncing the abuses of Sodalitium to Peruvian catholic officials and the Vatican, but despite the great deal of available evidence, the only action taken so far has been to recall the founder of the organization to a private life in the Vatican.

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