Statement
April 4, 2025
Yesterday, April 3, 2025, we received the news that Sister Maria Elena Camones More, Commissary since July 26, 2024, has been notified in Lima of the Decree of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life of January 14, 2025, specifically approved on the same day by the Holy Father.
By this decree, our Public Association of the Faithful of Diocesan Right, with the intention of becoming a Society of Apostolic Life, Servants of the Plan of God (SPD), has been suppressed.
The other entities founded by the Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari Rodrigo, the Marian Fraternity of Reconciliation, the Christian Life Movement and the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, have also been suppressed due to the lack of initial charism and the abuses committed within them.
Pope Francis has designated Mons. Jordi Bertomeu Farnós, as delegate to accompany our process of suppression and starting today, he acts as the Apostolic Commissioner for the liquidation of the Servants of the Plan of God’s assets. The new Apostolic Commissioner has also communicated the appointment of Sister Carmen Reyes Varas as his Assistant Delegate in this process of liquidation.
The Servants of the Plan of God were approved as a Public Association of the Faithful on August 15, 1998. We have discovered that there have been many abuses during the first years of the community’s rapid growth and that it has persisted throughout our history.
In 2018, the Archbishop of Lima decreed a first intervention or Canonical Visitation which highlighted the harmful and abusive structures that were present within the community and showed us the need to initiate a process of reflection and renewal, which included the realization of the First General Assembly and the election of new authorities, which took place in December 2019.
Continuing with our process and given the evident number of victims, in December 2021, His Excellency Monsignor Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio, Archbishop of Lima, decreed a second canonical visitation. On August 10, 2023, he decreed a new intervention, appointing as Commissary Rev. Iñazio Azcoaga Lasheras, a diocesan priest of the Archdiocese of Pamplona-Tudela, Spain. He was later replaced in this role by Sister María Elena Camones More, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Lima.
In August 2024, the new Commissary invited us to begin a process of personal discernment aimed at an eventual closure of the community.
On January 31, 2025, from Lima, we officially received the news that the Holy Father Francis had appointed Mons. Jordi Bertomeu Farnós as Delegate to accompany our process of suppression. At that time, we issued a communiqué stating that “we filially accept the decision of suppression made by Pope Francis, and although it is very difficult and painful, we feel united with him as the Vicar of Christ and with our beloved Church, which we have always served with the best of intentions.”
Over the past two months, and after several meetings with Mons. Jordi Bertomeu Farnós, we have been engaged in a personal and communitarian discernment aimed at closing the local communities and our future life of serving God and the Church.
The Apostolic Commissioner has made himself available to us to ensure the psychological and spiritual healing of each one, to ensure the continuity of the apostolic works in progress as much as possible, and to make reparation to all those affected after being part of our community.
Now that the suppression is a reality, since the notification of the decree and having become more aware of what we have lived through, we feel indebted both as an institution and on a personal level. Especially to all the sisters who at some point were part of the community, and also to their parents and close family members, who entrusted them to a community that seemed to offer a life project through which they could fully live out their vocation as consecrated women—something that, as it turned out, was not the case. This causes them pain and confusion, but in the midst of it all, we would like to convey that nothing is impossible for God, and that in this experience of trusting abandonment in which we now find ourselves, we wish to share with them the consolation we also feel, and ask that they too hold our hand during this time.
We are aware of the immense suffering that, in addition to the abuses experienced, has been caused by the attitude of silence maintained by those of us who have been within the community in recent years. We are aware of how many of the decisions made by our leadership have perpetuated this system of abuse, neglecting respect for each person and the living out of the Gospel.
We acknowledge, with sorrow, that the sectarian culture of abusive control that took hold in the Servants of the Plan of God was expressed in the lack of proper respect and care for each person: from vocational recruitment, the distancing from families, the abusive exercise of authority, manipulation of conscience, physical, psychological and spiritual abuse, to the abandonment suffered after leaving the community, etc. We are deeply pained and ashamed by what we have had suffered within our community, and for this we ask forgiveness for our actions and omissions.
We also ask forgiveness for reacting late and slowly to the suffering of our sisters, and for the times we did not listen, denied or minimized their pain. Forgive us if we did not know how to welcome them and take the appropriate measures of justice and charity; for not giving the voices that were raised the place they deserved. We are deeply sorry for the consequences of re-victimization that this process has entailed. We are grateful to all those who, in one way or another, have sought to express their pain and thus contributing to this process of purification.
Mons. Jordi Bertomeu has informed us that he has ordered the continuation of the ongoing process of economic and psychological reparation for the victims, carried out by the “Independent Service of Reception, Listening and Reparation Eshma.” Moreover, he has also expressed his willingness to receive new complaints for as long as he holds his position as commissary. We trust that this process will be truly restorative and will bear the fruits of forgiveness and healing that we so desire.
Finally, we would like to thank all the Bishops of the Dioceses in which we have served, as well as many lay and consecrated persons who have offered their support and accompanied us during these 26 years — and especially during this recent time. We are grateful to those who have been part of our projects and works, who have taught us so much through their simplicity and love, and who have given us the opportunity to enter into their lives.
Infinite thanks to God for His merciful pedagogy. As the Apostolic Commissioner reminded us, for years we have celebrated the anniversary of our foundation on August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption: even in an event that has proved sterile, such as the foundation of our community, God now announces an unexpected abundance for all of us, gathering together all the good things we have lived. He has visited us as Mary visited Elizabeth. This name means “God brings to fulfilment” and she, who was barren, discovered that she was the recipient of the Lord’s imagination, that she could recognize the hidden presence of God in her fellow woman, Mary. her fellow woman, Mary. Both of them, in this dialogue of trust, experience a new spiritual consolation or joy: they know the meaning of their lives, what to do from now on, how to go on. They know that God is not the enemy of their plenitude, but that He alone can give it to them. They know that God is the Child in Mary’s womb who, even in moments of deep desolation, allows himself to be embraced and caressed.
In this last statement from those of us who have been Servants of God’s Plan up to now, we entrust ourselves to your prayers so that the Lord may enlighten and strengthen us in this journey we are undertaking.
Click here to read the Decree of suppression
* We remind everyone that any official communication from the Servants will be published only through their official communication channel (www.siervasdelplandedios.org).
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e-mail: oficina.prensa@siervasdelplandedios.org
