"Luis Fernando Figari"

ABOUT L. F. Figari

Born in Lima, Peru in 1947. After finishing High School, he studied Humanities and Law in the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He studied Law in the National University of San Marcos. And later, after a second conversion process, he studied Theology in the Facultad de Teologia Pontificia y Civil de Lima, which is the most ancient University of the Americas, going back to the XVI century. He also taught there for one year, after which he dedicated fully to evangelization by word and wriottings.

He has published articles and books. He is considered as one of the main Catholic thinkers in the Americas. He has strongly backed the ideal of Reconciliation, as well as the organization of congresses on several occasions on the issue of Reconciliation. He is fully convinced that the lay members of the Church, flowing from their rebirth in Lord Jesus, must answer the gift of Baptism and, according to their condition, actively assume their specific role in the mission of the Church and strive in their lives towards sanctity. Pope Blessed John Paul II named him as Consultor to the Pontifical Lay Council. Pope Benedict XVI ratified him on this position.

After participating in politics' and searching answers in philosophy, he began to walk through the path of the faith. His conversion process finds a culminating point in the foundation of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, in 1971. He calls that moment "baptism of a search". In 1997, Sodalitium was approved by Pope John Paul II as a Society of Apostolic Life for consecrated laymen and priests.

In 1974, he had begun the Immaculate Mary Association for women.

After having participated in the first World Youth's Day, in 1984, having pronounced the "Catechesis on Love", in Saint Paul Outside the Walls, he founded the Christian Life Movement (CLM). It was in the year 1985. In 1994, the Holy See approved CLM as an International Lay Association of Faithful of pontifical right, also known as Ecclesiastic Movement.

In 1991, Luis Fernando founded the Marian Community of Reconciliation, for women that discovered in their lives the call to a lay consecrated life. Years later, in 1998, he founded another religious association for women, the Siervas of the Plan of God.

All the members of these institutions share a common spirit and goals, and form a spiritual family: the Sodalit Family. It is constituted by men and women of every age, and is extended throughout the Americas, as well as in some countries of Europe and in Philippines, in Asia.

Currently, because of health reasons he is emeritus, and in process of recovery.