The Vatican's big 'wager':
To rebuild Maciel's Legion from scratch
The Vatican has spoken bluntly about Father Maciel's offenses
and the system of power that covered up his disgraceful life.
It will set the agenda for reconstructing the Legionaries of Christ.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict's cardinal-delegate will have full powers over the LC.
ROME, May 3, 2010 – The statement released two days ago by the Holy See regarding the Legionaries of Christ is extremely significant. It should be read from start to finish. But a thorough understanding of it requires some explanatory notes.
The five bishops who carried out an Apostolic Visitation of the Legion - each one a prominent figure in their respective countries – delivered their reports to the Vatican in mid-March after seven months of investigations in their respective geographic areas.
On the basis of their reports, and with extensive citations from them, the Vatican Secretariat of State prepared a working document.
Called back to the Vatican at the end of April, the five inspectors worked all day Friday, April 30, and Saturday morning, reviewing the document and their reports with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, together with Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Cardinal Franc Rodé, prefect of the congregation for religious, and Archbishop Fernando Filoni, deputy secretary for general affairs at the Secretariat of State.
The group also drafted the statement issued later Saturday by the Vatican.
Benedict XVI sat in on the group's work for an hour and a half, in silence, on the morning of Friday, April 30. Before leaving them, he encouraged those present to make concrete proposals, on the basis of which he would make his decisions.
But this was only the latest act in the role of absolute leadership played by Joseph Ratzinger in the case of the Legionaries of Christ.
At the end of 2004, it was he who ordered an investigation of their founder, Marcial Maciel Degollado, despite the general belief held by the entire Curia at the time that the charges were unfounded, and by
Pope John Paul II himself.
As Pope, it was he who in 2006 issued a sentence that amounted to condemnation of Maciel
[although a canonical trial was waived because of the Mexican priest's age and state of health at the time].
It was he who in the summer of 2009 ordered the Apostolic Visitation of the Legion.
The statement enunciates, for the first time in an official Vatican document, the offenses of the Legion's founder, offenses that not even the sentence in 2006 had formulated.
These are identified as "extremely serious and objectively immoral behaviors," and in some cases as "real crimes," tending to depict "a life devoid of scruples and of authentic religious sentiment."
The statement also makes a severe and unprecedented judgment of the "system of relationships" constructed around Maciel, of the "silence of the entourage," of the "mechanism of defense" of his disgraceful life.
Writing that "most of the Legionaries were unaware of this life," the statement implicitly affirms that some of them did know about it.
So there will be no indulgence for the "system of power" that closed ranks around Maciel before and after his death, meaning the current central and territorial leaders of the Legion.
In particular, it is completely unrealistic to think that the ax might spare the two supreme leaders, director general Álvaro Corcuera and vicar general Luís Garza Medina.
The latter of these, until now the real man in charge of the Legion from the financial point of view, has done everything possible over the past few weeks to position himself as a new Talleyrand, capable of remaining in the saddle even in the Thermidor, after having supported the Terror.
But Maciel also appeared "untouchable" – as the statement recalls – and capsized in the end.
With a great deal of realism, the working document that was discussed did not take for granted the success of the work of reconstruction that the Legion will have to accomplish. About the future, it used the word "wager."
One element of hope – according to the statement – is provided by the "great number of exemplary religious" encountered by the visitors, animated by "authentic zeal for the spread of the Kingdom of God."
But of the 800 priests of the Legion, only about 100 are now deliberately working for a "path of profound renewal." Most of them are still disoriented, traumatized by the revelations about the founder, submissive to the authority of the leaders they see as their only source of stability.
In addition to the appointment of a commissioner, the Vatican authorities announced two other provisions in the statement.
The first was already expected, and will be a supplemental apostolic visitation of Regnum Christi, the lay association that flanks the Legionaries, also founded by Maciel.
The second provision, on the other hand, emerged from the discussion in recent days. An independent commission will be created to study the constitutions of the Legion, and in particular to "review the exercise of authority."
As for the commissioner - the papal "delegate" who will assume full powers in the phase of rebuilding the Legion - it is expected that Benedict XVI will appoint him before the summer.
At the meeting, the papal delegate's ideal qualities were described. Only one name has been mentioned so far - Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop of Guadalajara.
Cardinal Sandoval is well acquainted with the Legion, which has its historic homeland in Mexico. He is also the titular archbishop of the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Rome, which belongs to the Legionaries.
But he has never gotten mixed up with them and their intrigues, neither with Maciel nor with the current leaders. He is 77 years old, and is about to resign as head of the diocese because he is past canonical retirement age. He would therefore be able to dedicate himself to the matter full time.
At the Vatican, he is a member of the congregations for the religious and for Catholic education, and of the prefecture for the economic affairs of the Holy See. Moreover, he is part of the commission of cardinals that supervises the Vatican bank IOR. He is seen as very resolute and trustworthy.
One last observation. With this statement, the Holy See has overturned the dominant model of recent reporting on pedophilia. Instead of letting its agenda be dictated by the newspapers, instead of responding case by case to the deluge of accusations, this time the Holy See has taken the initiative.
[The Apostolic Visitation was an initiative taken by Benedict XVI long before the sleeping wolves of the media awakened once more to the issue of sexual abuse by priests. Yet Saturday's announcement has been portrayed uniformly in the MSM - the (wolves) herd line - as a Vatican response to media pressure over sexual abuse!][
In the case of the Legionaries, it is the media that have to play catch-up with the decisions of the Vatican authorities, and of the Pope in the first place. And it is hard to contest these decisions, which are distinctively ecclesiastical decisions, which no earthly tribunal may co-opt.
Decisions intended not only to punish, but above all to heal, reinforce, purify, reconstruct within that order of grace and faith of which the Church is custodian.
Meanwhile, further coarsening the herd line that the Vatican's actions on the Legion were the result of media pressure, the New York Times now puts a spin that blames Cardinal Ratzinger for not having pushed forward with the investigation of Maciel when he was the head of CDF. Anything to place him in the wrong ,and not to attribute anything good to him!
In stalled inquiry,
a view of Vatican politics
By Daniel J. Wakin and James C. McKinley Jr.
New York Times News Service
May 03. 2010
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI halted an inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse against the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, an influential priest. He would not address the case for eight years.
The two former Mexican seminarians had gone to the Vatican in 1998 to personally deliver a case recounting decades of sexual abuse by one of the most powerful priests in the Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado.
As they left, they ran into the man who would hold Maciel’s fate in his hands, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and kissed his ring. The encounter was no accident. Ratzinger wanted to meet them, witnesses later said, and their case was soon accepted.
But in little more than a year, Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — halted the inquiry.
“It isn’t prudent,” he told a Mexican bishop, according to two people who later talked to the bishop.
For five years, the case remained stalled, possibly a hostage to Maciel’s powerful protectors in the Curia, the Vatican’s governing apparatus, and his own deep influence at the Holy See.
In any case, it took Ratzinger — by then Benedict — until 2006, eight years after the case went before him, to address Maciel’s abuses by removing him from priestly duties and banishing him to a life of prayer and penitence, though without publicly acknowledging his wrongs or the suffering of his victims.
And
on Saturday, four years after that, the Vatican announced that Benedict would appoint a special delegate to run the powerful worlldwide order that Maciel founded, the Legionaries of Christ, and establish a commission to examine its constitution.
A close look at the record shows that the case was marked by the same delays and bureaucratic caution that have emerged in the handling of other sexual abuse matters crossing Benedict’s desk, whether as an archbishop in Munich or a cardinal in Rome.
Benedict’s supporters believe he was trying to take action on the Maciel case but was thwarted by other powerful Church officials.
But advocates for Maciel’s victims say that the Vatican’s eventual investigation and reckoning in the case were too little, too late.
‘This was tolerated’
The Rev. Alberto Athie Gallo, a Mexican priest who in 1998 tried to bring allegations of sexual abuse by Maciel to the attention of Ratzinger, said the Vatican allowed Maciel, who died in 2008, to lead a double life for decades.
“This was tolerated by the Holy See for years,” Athie said. “In this sense, I think the Holy See cannot get to the bottom of this matter. It would have to criticize itself as an authority.”
For years, Maciel had cultivated powerful allies among the cardinals, through gifts and cash donations, according to reporting by Jason Berry in the
National Catholic Reporter. Berry is co-author of a book about the order and helped break the story of the priest’s abuses.
Chief among these allies was the former Vatican Secretary of State and the most powerful man next to Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, now the dean of the College of Cardinals and an outspoken defender of Benedict.
“Until Pope Benedict confronts Sodano’s role in the cover-up of Maciel, I don’t see how he can move beyond the crisis that has engulfed his papacy,” Berry said. Berry reported that Ratzinger refused an offer of money from the Legionaries.
Sodano did not respond to written requests for an interview.
Maciel founded the Legionaries of Christ in Mexico in 1941. It grew to be a powerhouse and now operates in 22 countries, claiming to have 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians. It runs schools, universities, charities and media outlets.
The order acquired the air of a personality cult, with Maciel’s pictures dominating the order’s buildings and his writings required reading.
Maciel’s troubles with the Vatican dated to 1956, when his personal secretary accused him of drug abuse and financial mismanagement; he was suspended for two years during an investigation, after which he was cleared and reinstated in 1959.
Reports of problems in the order persisted, including sexual abuse allegations forwarded to the Vatican starting in the late 1970s. In 1997, nine former Legion seminarians — a number of them prominent priests and professionals — detailed their abuse at the hands of Maciel in a series of articles in
The Hartford Courant by Berry and Gerald Renner.
That same year,
La Jornada in Mexico City published a similar expose. The following year, eight of the men brought a complaint to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Ratzinger led. Jose Barba Martin, a historian at the prestigious ITAM university in Mexico, was one of them.
He said he and another victim, Arturo Jurado, a language teacher, met with the Rev. Gianfranco Girotti, one of Ratzinger’s secretaries, on Oct. 17, 1998. They were represented during the meeting by their canon lawyer, Martha Wegan, and a Mexican canon lawyer, the Rev. Antonio Roqueni.
By February 1999, the Congregation had officially accepted the case, according to a letter from Wegan.
At around the same time as the case was accepted, Athie, who had become interested in the matter and was helping Maciel’s victims, wrote a letter outlining another abuse charge and gave it to Bishop Carlos Talavera of Mexico, who told him that he had delivered it to Ratzinger.
In it, Athie described the detailed deathbed confession in 1995 of the Rev. Juan Manuel Fernandez Amenabar, who had told Athie about years of abuse by Maciel.
In an interview, Athie said Talavera — who has since died — told him that the cardinal had read the letter and decided not to proceed with the case. “Ratzinger said it could not be opened because he was a person very beloved by the Pope,” referring to Maciel, “and had done a lot of good for the church. He said as well, ‘I am very sorry, but it isn’t prudent,’” Athie said. [In other words, this entire testimony is hearsay from a man who is no longer around to be questioned! How convenient!]
Several former Legionaries have also said that Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, was close to Maciel and may have played a role in either keeping information about him from John Paul or working to stymie an investigation.
Others suspected jealousy of Maciel’s success. “The accusations truly were seen as unfounded and a vendetta against him,” said Sandro Magister, an Italian journalist who has closely followed the case.
But something changed. In December 2004, Ratzinger opened a canonical investigation and sent Monsignor Charles Scicluna, a Maltese canon lawyer who in 2002 was appointed promoter of justice at the Congregation, to Mexico to question the plaintiffs.
At the time, it was clear that Ratzinger would be playing an important role in a future conclave to elect the next Pope.
And with the Pope’s health and power waning, Ratzinger may have felt a freer hand in acting against a figure protected by others in the Vatican — possibly to clear the decks for the next Pope, possibly to remove a stain on John Paul’s record or his own, should he be considered for the papacy.
BY THE WAY...Where were the MSM hotshots when Berry broke the news about Maciel in 1997??? Where were tehy at all in covering the Maciel case since his possible double life first surfaced in the 1990s??? Obviously, neither the New York Times nor the AP, to name the lead 'sanctimpnious' agencies in all this, did not think it worthwhile to pursue at all! Nor did the Boston Globe which would act four years later to expose and express rightful outrage about what was happening in its own diocese - but ignored a potential huge story of the same nature in neighboring Connecticut in 1997.
And no one in MSM picked up the Maciel story at all, not even when the sex abuse scandal erupted in the US in 2001-2002. Nor when the CDF disciplined him in 2006, after the few commentaries that accompanied that development's 15 minutes of fame in the media!
Is it possible that Maciel's PR largesse influenced more than just some prelates in the Vatican?
And why, when Jason Berry, resurrected the Maciel case in a piece for Global Post back in July 2009 did no one still pick it up????
It wasn't until all the media outcry against Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was in full hue recently that the National Catholic Reporter accommodated Berry's expose!
It all seems to prove that MSM and liberal Catholic media will only go after a story if it serves their larger secular ideological purpose, and not because they really want to serve the truth!
More inexplicable because the Maciel story had all the elements of a juicy sex scandal - far more than the tawdry deeds of a Father Murphy or Father Kiesle - and that also involved corruption and bribes, exposure of a man widely reputed by his followers to be a living saint, andreally BIG names at the Vatican????
Why, all this time, did the Times and AP not deploy a single person to investigate the case in any way with the same dogged diligence that they have been going after Fr. Hullerman and Mons. Gruber in Bavaria, for offenses on a far smaller scale compared to the Legion scandal that involves an entire worldwide congregation????
It can't be just congenital MSM hypocrisy!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/05/2010 14:22]