The Daugher of Marcial Maciel and Her Half Brothers file Suit, Part III

Consequences: re-found the order or eliminate

La hija de Marcial Maciel y sus medios hermanos demandan
Third and last part
Por (By) Sanjuana Martínez for CIMAC

Mexico City, August 14, 2009 (CIMAC).- Las denuncias de los abusos de Marcial Maciel remeció a la opinión pública y al andamiaje de la Iglesia Católica, pero un gran apoyo silencioso mantiene el un precario equilibrio a los Legionarios de Cristo, quienes se replantean un cambio que podría alejar a su feligresía.

The claims of Marcial Maciel's abuses rocked public opinion as well as the very framework of the Catholic Church, but a great and helpful silence maintains the fragile equilibrium of the Legionaries of Christ, who are rethinking a change which might chase away their faithful followers.

LOS HIJOS Y EL VATICANO THE CHILDREN AND THE VATICAN

Los comisión formada por el Papa Joseph Ratzinger para la inspección de los Legionarios de Cristo que deberá entregar su informa en octubre está formada por Watty Urquidi de Tepic, Ricardo Belázquez de Bilbao, Ricardo Ezzati Andrello de Chile, Charles Joseph Chaput de Denver y Giuseppe Versaldi de Alessandria, Italia.

The commission formed by Pope Joseph Ratzinger to investigate the Legionaries of Christ which must hand in their report in October is comprised of Watty Urquidi of Tepic, Ricardo Belázquez of Bilbao, Ricardo Ezzati Andrello of Chile, Charles Joseph Chaput of Denver y Giuseppe Versaldi of Alessandria, Italia.

“El equipo que ha elegido Ratizinger ya muestra claramente por dónde van ir los resultados. Roma tenía dos opciones: elegir un equipo que extendiese un tupido velo de silencio sobre el asunto o nombrando visitadores que en principio están todos en contra.

"The team that Ratizinger [sic] chose clearly shows where they want the results to go. Rome had two options: choose a team that would extend a shroud of silence over the whole thing or name visitors who in principle were against them.

Lo que sí me consta es que los Legionarios han iniciado una especie de chantaje con algunos, pero ellos aparentemente están dispuestos a presentar informes que obliguen a los Legionarios de Cristo a refundarse, a limpiarse profundamente como los Capuchinos. Tendrían que renunciar a la memoria del fundador, tendrían que condenar a Marcial Maciel. Además la actual cúpula legionaria: Corcuera, Garza y Cristóforo tienen que desaparecer junto con Maciel, porque fueron sus protectores”, dice el vaticanista Vidal.

What I do know is that the Legionaries are playing a kind of game with some, but they are apparently willing to present reports that oblige the Legion to re-found itself, to clean up deeply like the Capuchins. They will have to renounce the memory of the founder, they will have to condemn Marcial Maciel. Also, the actual Legionary command: Corcuera, Garza y Cristoforo [sic, should be Sada Derby] will have to disappear along with Maciel, because they were his protectors" says the vaticanist Vidal.

Los resultados de la inspección, sin embargo, no se harán públicos porque los visitadores están bajo secreto pontificio al igual que sus informes que deberán incluir el capítulo de los hijos de Maciel y las anomalías estructurales de la congregación.

The results of the investigation, however, will not be made public because the visitors are under pontifical secret and their reports should include a chapter on Maciel's children and the structural anomalies of the congregation.

La gran duda que surgirá entonces es por qué durante 50 años supuestamente nadie supo de las tropelías de Maciel: “Lo supieron y lo encubrieron. Ratzinger y el papa Wojtyla si sabían porque tenían informes de los primeros abusados. Tenían informes sobre cantidad de cosas. ¿Por qué Juan Pablo II lo siguió protegiendo hasta el final? ¿Por qué Ratzinger lo condena cuando Maciel ha muerto? El caso Maciel salpica directamente al Papa magno, al Papa que será Santo dentro de poco”.

The question in everyone's mind is why for 50 years did no one supposedly know about Maciel's turpitudes: "They knew about them and they covered them up. Ratzinger and Pope Wojtyla did know because they had reports of the first abuses. They had reports about many things. Whey did John Paul II continue to protect him to the very end? Why did Ratzinger only condemn him once Maciel had died? The Maciel case sullies the great Pope directly, the Pope who will be a Saint very soon."

Por eso es necesario, según José Barba, una comisión de laicos que investigue independiente el caso Maciel para informar a la sociedad en su conjunto: “La Iglesia no es inocente, es corresponsable o culpable de esta situación porque la permitió. Todas estas cosas que ha hecho Maciel estaban escritas en informes desde finales de los años cuarenta y cincuenta. El Vaticano encubrió a Marcial Maciel, pero el más culpable es el Papa Juan Pablo II”, comenta José Barba quien le envió personalmente una carta al pontífice en 1997 señalando puntualmente las aberraciones de Maciel.

Because of this it is necessary, according to Jose Barba, that a commission of laypeople independently investigate the Maciel case to inform the whole society: "The Church is not innocent, it is co-responsible and guilty in this situation because it allowed it to occur. All of this things that Maciel did were written in reports from the end of the '40s and '50s. The Vatican covered up for Marcial Maciel, but the man most responsible is Pope John Paul II," comments Jose Barba who sent a personal letter to the pontiff in 1997 detailing Maciel's aberrations.

Más aún, los encubridores como el cardenal Angelo Sodano siguen manejando los hilos dentro de El Vaticano: “A Maciel lo encubrieron la Secretaría de Estado dirigida por Sodano, la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe dirigida por Ratzinger, la Congregación para los Religiosos y algunas otras instituciones. Lograron bloquear toda investigación en su contra, las congelaron todas”.

Moreover, the enablers such as Cardinal Angelo Sodano continue to manipulate strings in the Vatican: "The Secretariat of State, headed up by Sodano, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith directed by Ratzinger, and the Congregation of Religious along with other institutions covered up for Maciel. They managed to block the investigation against him, they froze everything."

Lo que está en juego con la inspección vaticana a los Legionarios es mucho más que la conducta de un pervertido y su doble vida. Para Alberto Athié la herencia del fundador y sus vástagos representan incluso una cortina de humo para distraer la atención del nivel de envergadura en torno a la revisión de la Legión de Cristo: “La visita apostólica pareciera un ente que no tiene nada que ver con lo sucedido en torno a Maciel, aunque fue parte de la complicidad y el encubrimiento. Ahora visita a un ente enfermo y lo hace como si la visita viniera de una estructura pura que busca limpiar a un ente corrupto. Es un esquema parcial y dará una información sesgada. La investigación completa del caso Maciel seguirá pendiente”.

What is in play with the Vatican's investigation into the Legionaries is much more than the conduct of a pervert and his double life. For Alberto Athie, the legacy of the founder and his offspring represent a smoke screen to distract attention from the level of importance about the revision of the Legion of Christ: "The apostolic visit seems to be a thing that has nothing to do with the filth surrounding Maciel, although it was a part of the complicity and the cover-up. Now the visit is to something sick and it is being done as if the visit is from a pure entity which looks to clean up a totally corrupt one. This is a partial view and will give biased information. The complete investigation of the Maciel case will remain pending."

Añade: “Lo importante es que analicen el mecanismo que creó Marcial Maciel al interior de la congregación con su conducta, con la generación de sus víctimas que los volvió cómplices, victimarios y encubridores; varios de ellos son ahora superiores mayores. Son la cúpula. Esa cúpula es precisamente la que está en una grave crisis ante un amplio grupo de sacerdotes que fueron leales a la Congregación y que están hoy indignados. Dentro de la Legión hay gente muy valiosa que no hay que olvidar”.

He adds: "The important thing is that the mechanisms created by Marcial Maciel inside of the congregation be analysed, along with its conduct, with the generation of his victims who became his accomplices, victims and enablers; many of them are now major superiors. They are in the top levels of power. It is this top level that is in a grave crisis with a large group of priests who were loyal to the congregation and are now indignant. Within the Legion, there are valuable people whom we should not forget about."

Los sucesores de Marcial Maciel han sugerido que extirpando al fundador todo se resuelve, pero según Athié una refundación de la Legión es prácticamente imposible: “El tumor es Maciel y lo quieren extirpar pero ya hay metástasis. Parecía que la Congregación se salvaba quitando al tumor pero resulta que tiene metástasis en el cerebro que son las actuales cabezas. Ese grupo de la cúpula tiene que ser extirpado. ¿Hasta dónde van a llegar? Ya lo veremos. Allí esté el Regnum Christi en el centro neurálgico de la cuestión”.

Maciel's sucessors have suggested that cutting out the founder will resolve everything, but according to Athie, refounding the Legion is practically impossible: "The tumor is Maciel, and they want to cut it out, but it has metastisized. It seems that the Congregation will be saved by removing the tumor, but there is metastisis in the brain which are the actual heads or leaders. This group of leaders has to be cut out. How far should they go? We will see. The Regnum Christi is in the neurological center of the matter."

--¿Por qué no puede existir una Refundación de la Legión como la de los Capuchinos?

--Why can't the Legion be refounded like the Capuchins?

--La refundación tiene la riqueza de recuperar la propuesta del fundador que se volvería a la regla o la santidad de alguien que llame a la refundación. En el caso de Maciel era el cuarto voto: el de silencio, todo lo demás no tiene novedad, salvo el tema de atender a las clases privilegiadas. Al refundarse no podría volver a las fuentes del fundador: ni en la propuesta ni en la persona.

--A re-foundation has the richness of being able to recover the original proposal of the founder and return to the rule or sanctity of someone who calls for the refoundation. In the Maciel case, there was the fourth vow, that of silence, all the rest is nothing new, except the thing about ministering to the privileged classes. They cannot return to the sources of the founder, not to his proposals nor to his person.

Entonces, ¿cuál refundación? La metástasis se puede pasar a otros focos de infección. El gran temor de El Vaticano, hay que decirlo claro, es que con su desaparición se registre la pérdida de las familias adineradas para la Iglesia, pero el caso Marcial Maciel es de tal corrupción y daño a la institución que apenas empiezan a vislumbrarse sus consecuencias”.

So then, what about refoundation? The metastasis would then go on to other points of infection. The Vatican's great fear, it must be clearly stated, is that with suppression, many wealthy families will be lost for the Church. But the Marcial Maciel case is one of corruption and damage to the institution which is only beginning to show its consequences."

Por lo pronto, el escándalo de los hijos se perfila intenso a base de acuerdos millonarios extrajudiciales y demandas civiles que, según José Barba, no son más que lo que ellos se cansaron de denunciar: “Ojalá que la Legión tenga vida suficiente para garantizar esas pensiones vitalicias que ha empezado a dar a cambio de silencio. Que comience por pensar en sí misma. Es una grave ironía”.

For the time being, the scandal of the children in under intense scrutiny because of million dollar settlements outside of the courts and civil suits which, according to Jose Barba, are no more than what they have been able to demand: "We hope that the Legion will live long enough to guarantee these life pensions which they are beginning to give out in exchange for silence. The Legion has to think of itself. This is a serious irony."

Call for Action Against Facilitators

From a comment on xlcrc.com by Anthony concerning a post by Fr. Karras on his blog:

Consider this second excerpt:

"I will take this a step further – and believe me, it has been a long, dark and painful journey to this point – and say: who among us, Legionaries of 20, 30, 40 years or more – being of sound mind and discerning conscience – would have endured even one minute of the teaching, preaching, discipline, spirituality, methodology, spiritual direction, ‘questions’, conferences or writings of Fr. Maciel had we known that at the very time he was hypnotizing us with his lies he was sexually abusing seminarians, fathering children, running around on the congregation’s dime, duping popes, cardinals, bishops and benefactors…

It was our ignorance that held the Legion together. The LC is founded, not on the supposed sanctity and inspiration and charism of its Founder, but on the gullible and impressionable idealism of his hapless followers."

I can tell Fr. Karras who would have endured Maciel's chicanery: precisely the people who have facilitated his wickedness, used him to obtain positions of power in the congregation, persecuted those who sought justice for the abused and attempted to maintain their authority in spite of all their wrongdoing. It was not simply the ignorance of gullible Legionaries that held the Legion together but the deception and duplicity of those who are currently in control of the Legion. These people need to be stripped of power and held accountable for their crimes. These people are not of advanced age or frail health. Canonical action should be taken against them.

And on to Spain

Ontaneda is forever burned in our memories as Legionaries, since it was the first apostolic school and the first solid foundation in Spain. However, for some (too many), it was the scene of horrid sexual abuse by Marcial Maciel and others when they were mere boys.

Now the investigation reaches those haunted hallways, filled with boyhood delight as well as silent screams of virginity lost in childhood.

From Gerinda Bai:
jueves 23 de julio de 2009
Los Legionarios de Onteneda (Cantabria) veneran al pederasta Maciel

El seminario menor que los Legionarios de Cristo tiene en Ontaneda es un antiguo balneario y gran hotel, levantado en 1833. Lo adquirieron en 1955, y fue la primera propiedad que la orden, fundada en México, tuvo en España. En la fachada principal, en la calle Generalísimo Franco, no hay carteles, inscripciones ni símbolos de ningún tipo. La discreción es la norma de la casa. No se puede ir más allá de la entrada, pero no hace falta ir más lejos para encontrar fotos enmarcadas del fundador de la congregación rodeado de jóvenes. Son recuerdos de las visitas del Padre Maciel, cuando de día impartía doctrina, dejándose adorar por sus incondicionales discípulos, y por la noche se hacía acompañar en la cama por alguno de ellos.

Las acusaciones de pederastia que pesaban sobre Maciel y otros miembros de la congregación fueron negadas durante años, hasta que las abrumadoras pruebas y testimonios convirtieron las sospechas en certeza.

Aristegui on the Apostolic Visitation of the Legion of Christ (Spanish)

CNN Mexico
Part I



Part II



The Legion of Christ was invited to participate in the program and they did not respond to the invitation.

The Colorado Independent Pulls No Punches

Denver Archbishop Chaput investigating vast sex-and-money Church scandal
By John Tomasic 7/29/09 8:00 AM

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput will be traveling this week and next and maybe into the fall. He has been asked by the Pope to look into the sex and money crimes of an extremely influential Mexican colleague, Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the rich-kid founder of the Legionaries of Christ Catholic order, an arm of the faith that professes a staunch conservative line intent on recapturing the Catholicism of the pre-Vatican II era — that chimeric time before the corruptions of modern life compromised the Holy Church and the members of its flock.

Goes without saying Maciel was a sexual predator as well as a world-class thief and influence peddler who molested young men in his charge and swore them to secrecy using the trappings and machinery of the faith. He also fathered a daughter, who he set up with her mother in a fancy apartment in Madrid. Maciel scored a $650 million budget for his special insider order, which goes a long way to explaining why his crimes have only surfaced in the last few years and especially now, of course, after his death at 88. No fear: Denver’s Archishop will put it all right.

Jason Berry, an author and journalist who has followed the case, has described Maciel as “the greatest fundraiser of the modern church.” Maciel will be as sorely missed by Church accountants as he is loathed by the seminarians he targeted for abuse.

Chaput is the “visitator” in the case for the U.S. and Canada, which basically means he’s the Vatican’s investigator in North America. He is reportedly taking testimony from past and present members of the order.

Jose Barba, a Mexico City college professor who filed a 1998 Vatican case against Maciel, told Berry that bishop-visitators including Chaput should investigate Legion finances.

“Fifty people in the States wanted to give testimony to [the Vatican] on [the legion's] financial abuses in 1998, but couldn’t get to Rome.”

Among the many questions Chaput will be considering, officially or unofficially, is whether in the end Maciel will cost the Church more in legal fees and settlements after his death than the hundreds of millions he raked in for the Church during his life. Chaput may also be considering the continuing questions of power and arrogance that loom behind the sexual scandals that have come to define the Church in American popular culture today.

Chaput’s report is due in the fall.

Another Piece of Jason Berry's Article (the guy who had it wrong, was a liar, and a persecutor of the Legion and enemy of the Church...)

From Vatican Investigates Legion of Christ, special to Globalpost.com

As promised, here is another snippet.

Maciel, who was born into a wealthy ranching family in Mexico, wooed cardinals and bishops with money, fine wines, $1,000 hams and even a new car — and in so doing secured support for his religious order inside the Roman Curia.

Now, as the investigating bishops, called “visitators” — from America, Italy, Mexico, Spain and Chile — begin travels for interviews in the order’s far-flung religious houses, two Vatican officials are in the Legion’s corner.

Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals and the former Secretary of State, and Franc Rode, the cardinal who oversees religious congregations, were both longtime allies of Maciel and strong supporters of the order today.

The issue facing Benedict has no precedent in modern church history: whether to dismantle a movement with a $650 million budget yet only about 700 priests and 2,500 seminarians, or to keep the brand name and try to reform an organization still run as a cult of personality to its founder. Excessive materialism and psychological coercion tactics continue Maciel’s legacy.

Two years ago Benedict abolished the “secret vows” by which each Legionary swore never to criticize Maciel or any superior, and to report any criticism to the leadership. The vows helped facilitate Maciel’s secret life of sexual plunder.

Photos: Cardinals Angelo Sodano (above) and Franc Rode (below).

Important Note From the Regnum Christi

Life-After-RC has the text of a letter from RC members to Fr. Alvaro Corcuera concerning the future of their movement.

In part, the letter reads

"We have always admired the Legionaries of Christ in their ability to see the good in things and speak positively of others. It is an admirable quality that is so lacking in most of our society, and sadly within the Church. However, this emphasis on the positive can become a double edged sword when exaggerated or misdirected. Indeed, it can be detrimental to the process of enacting the necessary reforms our organizations need. This ab ility to filter out and avoid negative news blinds you from perceiving the errors and flaws visible to us and voiced by some members of the Church hierarchy.

Our fear is that you and most of the Legionary major superiors continue to languish in a state of denial over the flaws and errors that have been introduced into the internal culture of the Legion by the decades long influence of Fr. Maciel and his deviant personality. You must face things squarely and get past this denial."

The authors claim that the RC is theirs, that they have built it up and that it does not belong to the superiors of the Legion of Christ. Any comments from experts in Spiritual Theology?

Be sure to read the entire letter at the link above.

Never Been to Walmart. Close the Apostolic Schools NOW!

From a comment on InsideCatholic.com

I Felt It in the Works
July 13th, 2009 | 6:39pm

While I was in the (diocesan, and healthy, sane, and orthodox) seminary I met a few ex-Legionaries. One of them, whom we will call F., mentioned to me that his 25th or 26th birthday was approaching. Several of his friends and I took him out to a local Appleby or Ruby Tuesday, or someplace of the like in town. We had dinner, drinks, and dessert. It was a nice evening. On the car ride home, he told me that he'd never gone out with friends for his birthday before. I was stunned, as if he'd said he'd never been to WalMart before (just kidding). But I was stunned. Here's what he explained.

He entered the Legion when he was 14. They discouraged the seminaries from having friends. "No friends?" I asked. Without any venom or malice, he said, "No. They were afraid of 'particular' friendships or affections. Our time - even our recreation time - was all planned for us. They were careful to make sure that we did things with different groups: volleyball with this group, then switch up for hiking with a new configuration of classmates, so we spent equal time with everyone, more or less. We were told to report to our spiritual director anyone that we saw spending noticeable amounts of time with any given classmate. If someone told us something that we were supposed to talk about only in spiritual direction - family stuff, sexual stuff, etc., we were supposed to report that to our spiritual director. So we couldn't make friends."

I was floored. He left voluntarily, and against a lot of recrimination by his superiors, after his first or second year in college seminary, after reading a Platonic dialogue that dealt with friendship. The priest-professor praised friendship as described in the text, and F. realized that while he was "friends" with "everyone," he had nothing like what the text described. He decided that he wanted it, and had to leave to get it. His family, he told me, was very supportive of him leaving even though they had thought it a good idea to go to the Legion in the first place.

It still just blows me away. And it says something significant about the structure of distrust and control. I think the Legion and RC have done a good amount of good work, and untold potential for more. They have a LOT of issues that need to be worked through, first though. And it's not just a crisis in leadership or curriculum - it can't be. Spiritual things don't work that way.

The Legion, it must be said, aren't [sic] being persecuted for being orthodox. It strikes me as significant here that even before their scandals, they had received flak not only from loosey-goosey bishops, but also from bishops noted for their public defense of the orthodox faith.

What Irony!

From the Catholic Herald (UK)

How the Jesuits can save the Legionaries of Christ
Fr Maciel failed to appreciate the need for freedom in religious life, says Dominic Scarborough

24 July 2009

The Jesuits are of course themselves at something of a crossroads. Their long history of being able to synchronise the Catholic faith with the host cultures of both other religions and, more recently, secularism has taken its toll on their fidelity to the Magisterium. But this provides a valuable lesson as well. They hold the answer to the Legion's problems.

I hope that the Visitation recommends nothing short of absorption of the Legion into the Society of Jesus as an autonomous worldwide province. There are a sufficient number of thoroughly orthodox and wise Jesuits, particularly in America - men such as Fr Joseph Fessio and Fr Mitch Pacwa - who could be asked to assume senior roles to help the process of renewing the Legion's spirituality.

Read the rest of this interesting angle here.

Visitator Interested in Testimonies-- Chaput is Listening

Archbishop Chaput read and responded very swiftly to a testimony that was sent to him. He requests VERY SHORT summaries -- the shorter the better because he is getting so many. Everything that he receives is being read, but, as he admits, the visitation is a huge undertaking and the response has been even huger than anticipated. Please pray for him and all the Apostolic Visitators. He will accept material either by email or USPS. His email address is: shepherd@archden.org

Mark communications to him as "PRIVATE." Only he will open them.

Fr. Karras on the Legion of Christ and the Investigation

If anything, the orchestrated ignorance of the LCs, 3GF and RC members regarding the apostolic visitation of the congregation provides an eerie backlighting for the event itself. The members of the movement, clergy and laity, have been scarcely informed and left unprepared. A strategy of ingenuous smiles and simulated serenity is firmly in place. As if the Vatican appointed visitators will be so overwhelmed by the choreography that they’ll overlook the dark recesses of the plot and the hidden horrors of the screenplay.

The LC would almost certainly prefer to be left alone to work out its own solutions. The visitation is an embarassment and an undesired intromission into its private laboratory where truth and lies can be arbitrarily fabricated or erased through the alchemy of spin and secrecy.

But the LC is wretchedly incapable of curing itself.

Case in point: how can the LC continue at this present moment to ordain deacons and priests? How can it promote to religious profession the young novices that obliviously inch toward their vows? How can the Legion now so aggressively recruit new candidates to fill its vaunted houses of formation?

Read it all here.

Jason Berry on the Vatican Investigation

Talk about having been right all along. And vilified for it...

Vatican investigates Legionaries of Christ
The Catholic Church looks into cult allegations — and $1,000 hams.
By Jason Berry — Special to GlobalPost
Published: July 19, 2009 20:54 ETU

Editor's note: A sweeping Vatican investigation of an international religious order — and the cult of personality built around its founder — has just begun in Rome. Five bishops are delving into the finances and internal dynamics of an organization suspected of influence peddling. Award-winning investigative reporter and author Jason Berry has tracked these events for years in a book he co-authored and a documentary he produced on events leading to the Pope's decision to investigate. In this exclusive report for GlobalPost, Berry breaks new ground on the Vatican investigation of the Legionaries of Christ, and the case against Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder.

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI recently appointed five bishops from as many countries to investigate the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order founded in 1941 by the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican priest who is accused of sexually abusing young seminarians, and who left a grown daughter who was born out-of-wedlock.

Even after death, Maciel wields power through the influence he secured.

While the American Catholic Church has been publicly battered by two decades of priest sexual abuse scandals that erupted in the press and devastated church finances with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on compensating victims and legal fees, the Maciel scandal has gone largely unnoticed by most of the American press.

There’s a reason: For decades, the Legion shunned the media while Maciel cultivated relationships with some of the most powerful, conservative Catholics in the world. He also forced his priests and seminarians to take vows never to criticize him, or any superior. The legion built a network of prep schools and an astonishing database of donors. In Maciel's militant spirituality, Legionaries — and their wing of lay supporters, Regnum Christi — see themselves as saving the church from a corrupted world. Behind the silence he imposed, Maciel was corrupt — abusing seminarians and using money in ways that several past and present seminarians liken to bribery, in forging ties with church officials.

The silence Maciel imposed on his followers allowed Maciel to pursue a double life.

_________________

Exlcblogger will continue to publish snipets from this article.

Read the 5 page article here

Denver Post Boldly Puts Forth Chaput as Investigation Begins

Vatican taps Chaput to investigate order

By Electa DraperThe Denver Post
Posted: 07/17/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
Updated: 07/17/2009 08:24:00 AM MDT

The Vatican has asked Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput and four other prelates to investigate institutions of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative religious order whose deceased founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, had been accused of sexual improprieties.

Chaput is to investigate Legionaries centers in the U.S. and Canada, two of the 22 countries where the order has been active since it was established in 1941.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Jeanette DeMelo said she could not speculate why Chaput was selected for this "significant responsibility."

Although a few of the order's priests are in Colorado, she said, the state is not a center of Legionaries activity.

Maciel, who died Jan. 30, 2008, at age 87, had been accused of sexually abusing more than a dozen seminarians and young priests. Pope Benedict XVI removed the Mexican priest from public ministry in 2006 but did not confirm that sexual abuse had occurred.

It was revealed last year that Maciel had fathered a daughter. The Catholic News Service reported the order also was looking into alleged financial irregularities.

The Legionaries' headquarters in Rome said each prelate will conduct an investigation on his own time frame and program, then submit a report to the Vatican.

The Holy See then will provide directives for the order.

Critics of the Catholic Church's past handling of sexual improprieties by clergy issued a statement saying such internal investigations are not credible.

"We have even less faith in this one because the Legion is so extreme and secretive and because Chaput has shown a stronger commitment to preserving church doctrine from dissenters than protecting church members from predators," said Barbara Blaine, spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com

Pretty Straight Forward from the Legion

From Legionariesofchrist.org:

July 8, 2009. Rome, Italy. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State for His Holiness, has officially informed Father Álvaro Corcuera, LC, the general director of the Legion of Christ, that the announced apostolic visitation to the congregation will begin on July 15th.
Five visitors will carry out the visit:
Bishop Ricardo Watty Urquidi, M.Sp.S., Bishop of Tepic (Mexico) in Mexico and Central America.
Archbishop Charles Joseph Chaput, O.F.M., Archbishop of Denver (USA) in the United States and Canada.
Bishop Giuseppe Versaldi, Bishop of Alessandria (Italy) in Italy, Israel, South Korea, and the Philippines.
Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, S.D.B., Archbishop of Concepción (Chile) in South America.
Bishop Ricardo Blázquez Pérez, Bishop of Bilbao (Spain) in Europe (with the exception of Italy).
When sharing this news with all of the members of the congregation, Father Álvaro Corcuera said, “I invite all of us to give thanks to God and to the Church for the help that the Holy Father is offering us, and to welcome the visitors to each and every one of our communities with sincere charity and faith as representatives of the Vicar of Christ.”
The visitors will carry out their work according to the calendar and program that each one will set. Afterwards, they will hand over a report to the Holy See, which will then give the congregation the appropriate guidelines.
We ask all of our readers and friends to pray for the mission of the visitors and for the Legionaries of Christ.

One word missing: welcome the visitors with HONESTY