VATICAN CITY — Nine men have come forward after decades of silence to accuse the head of an international Roman Catholic Order of sexually abusing them when they were boys and young men training for the priesthood.
But, despite recent signs that the case was finally moving forward, in a startling turn-about decision that perhaps ominously indicates the tone of the papacy of Benedict XVI, the Vatican has announced there will be no further investigation.
Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, 76, founder of the Legionaries
of Christ, is alleged to have molested them in Spain and Italy from
the 1940s into the '60s. The men, now in their 50s and 60s, include a priest,
guidance counselor, professor, engineer and lawyer. Interviewed in Mexico
and the US, all said the events still haunt them, and some wept.
They said they are coming forward now because Pope John Paul II
did not respond to letters from two priests sent through church channels
in 1978 and 1989 seeking an investigation. The pope then publicly praised
Maciel in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of his ordination as an "efficacious
guide to youth."
None of the men have filed lawsuits against the Legionaries or the Church.
Many remain loyal Catholics and said they are not blaming the order or
the Church, but that all they seek is accountability by church authorities
for what they said was Maciel's sexual misconduct, producing sworn affidavits
detailing the abuse.
Founded by Maciel in 1941 in Mexico, the Legionaries of Christ is one
of the fastest growing religious orders in the Roman Church, recruiting
boys as young as 10 years old. It boasts of 343 priests (40 in the US)
and 2,000 seminarians in 18 countries. In the US, it has seminaries in
Orange, Connecticut and Cheshire, neither which is implicated in the current
accusations. It also runs prep schools in the US, Latin America, and Europe,
a university in Mexico City and schools for the poor in Mexico.
The Hartford Courant first learned of the allegations after
publishing articles in 1996 about the order's buying two national Catholic
weeklies, the National Catholic Register and Twin Circle. The stories also
focused on the order's fund-raising and the strict discipline in their
seminaries. Three men said they had to flee novitiate training when their
requests to leave were ignored.
The men making the accusations were known in the Legion as the "apostolic
schoolboys" due their youth at the time of their recruitment. Eight
of the men making the allegations are professionally successful Mexicans
or Mexican Americans, including two who helped establish the order in the
US. The ninth was a Spanish-born former Legionary priest and university
president who dictated a deathbed statement in 1995 accusing Maciel of
abusing him as a youth.
The accusers said that Maciel molested more than 30 boys from the 1940s
through at least the early 1960s. Several said he maintained a long-term
sexual relationship with them, and that he told some of them that he had
permission from Pope Pius XII to seek them out sexually for relief of physical
pain. The scenarios described were often the same: Maciel would summon
a boy to his room at night where he would be in his bed, writhing in apparent
pain, and ask the boy to rub his stomach. The sessions typically ended
in mutual masturbation. One man claimed he submitted about 40 times, and
when he resisted Maciel's attempts at anal penetration, Maciel summoned
another boy.
Many of the former Legionaries interviewed said that Maciel had an obsession
with light-skinned, fair-haired boys. One man said he had been instructed
to "get the prettiest and smartest kids" when sent to recruit
in Spain in 1963
Maciel weathered a Vatican investigation between 1956 and 1958, during
which he was suspended from his duties as head of the order. His accusers
say he was addicted to painkilling prescription drugs, though the investigation
cleared him of that, claiming they were often sent on errands to Roman
hospitals staffed by nuns to obtain them after other hospitals denied them.
Ironically, they said that their knowledge of his addiction softened their
attitudes towards his sexual abuse of them.
The report is presumably hidden in the Vatican's Secret
Archives. None of the men making the allegations today were not among
those who had complained at that time. In fact, they said they were young
seminarians who hotly defended whom they were taught to call "Nuestro
Padre" - Our Father. One man said that the seminary headmaster in
Rome told the seminarians that the Vatican investigators were "evil
people, of bad intentions," and that they were pressured to be silent
in order not to risk their own upcoming ordinations.
One of the men, Saul Barrales Arellano, 62, resisted Maciel's sexual
advances five to ten times and would sometimes sleep in the doorway to
Maciel's room to keep out others more willing to do the founder's bidding.
He was sent to the Canary Islands during the Vatican investigation to keep
him quiet, and then was expelled nine months later, just short of ordination.
The other men were likewise either expelled from the order or left on
their own accord. In the ensuing years it has taken them to rebuild their
lives, they were too frightened to accuse Maciel. The Vatican had exonerated
him, and with his power and influence, they felt no one would believe them.
The Legionaries of Christ pledge total fidelity to the pope. In addition
to the tradtional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they also vow
never to speak ill of the Legion, Maciel or their superiors, and to inform
on anyone who does. The former members recall being taught women were temptresses
and masturbation a mortal sin. They were told that if they left the order
they would go to hell: "lost vocation, sure damnation" was the
phrase that kept many from leaving for years after wanting to escape.
Disciplinary standards were medieval - students were given straps studded
with hooks to wrap around their thighs to ward off impure thoughts, and
the nights in the seminaries were often disturbed by sounds of students
flagellating themselves.
As the survivors described it, it was a culture of mind-control, where
every moment was to be accounted for throughout their entire lives. A system
of total control denied them access to telephones, and all mail was monitored.
Contact was curtailed with their families, the oath to inform made the
boys spy on one another, and punishments were severe, including solitary
confinement for over a month at a time.
The Legionaries have vehemently rebutted the accusations, saying in
a 19-page statement that their founder is the victim of a plot by disgruntled
former members to "fabricate these devastating charges" and destroy
his reputation. Those who allege a conspiracy include four former seminarians
from Mexico City. One man claims that the accusers invited him to a meeting
10 years ago and invited him to lie. He calls the alleged proposal "pure
calumny." Another man who had earlier accused Maciel in a sworn affidavit
recanted, claiming he had been encouraged by other former members to make
the allegations.
These counter-charges have been vigorously denied by the original accusers.
Maciel called the accusations "defamations and falsities with no foundation
whatsoever." He denied even "the suggestion of such acts"
ever arose in his relationships with his accusers. But he said he would
offer his "pain and prayers" for their "peace of soul and
remove from their hearts whatever resentment has moved them to make these
false accusations."
UPDATE – Degollado steps down
The Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the subject of a Vatican investigation into accusations of sexual abuse, has stepped down as head of the Rome-based religious order Legionaries of Christ.
Maciel declined to accept re-election as general director of the order, which he founded in Mexico in 1941. The order's U.S. headquarters is in Orange, Conn., and it has a seminary in Cheshire.
Maciel, 84, cited his age and his "desire to see the congregation flourish under a successor" at a meeting of his order in Rome last week, according to Zenit, an Internet news service operated by the Legionaries.
No mention was made of the Vatican's recent reopening of an investigation into charges that Maciel had sexually abused young boys who were in his seminaries years ago. The allegations first surfaced in a Courant report in February 1997. Nine former members of the Legion said that Maciel had abused them when they were young boys or teenagers, aged 10 to 16, in seminaries in Spain and Italy.
Maciel's decision to decline re-election had no connection to the reports that the Vatican has reopened the investigation, a spokesman for the order told The Associated Press in Rome on Monday.
Maciel and the order have vigorously denied the allegations, accusing the nine men of a conspiracy to defame him.
"He had been planning this for at least three years," said the spokesman, the Rev. Tom Williams.
The order's general chapter meets every 12 years. The election was held Thursday in Rome, with the announcement of the leadership change made Sunday. The Rev. Alvaro Corcuera, 47, a Mexican, was elected to succeed Maciel after leaders of the order "first re-elected Father Maciel by absolute majority vote" but he declined to accept, Zenit reported.
Corcuera has been rector of the Legionaries' Center for Higher Studies in Rome, the order's major seminary. He has worked closely with Maciel on projects related to the governing of the congregation. He is also a consultant to the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops.
The Legionaries of Christ reports that it has 600 priests and 2,500 seminarians in 18 countries, and 65,000 members in an affiliated, mostly lay organization called Regnum Christi. About 75 of the priests are in the United States.
Maciel founded the order when he was a 20-year-old seminarian in January 1941 and has led it ever since. He has won high praise from Pope John Paul II and top Vatican officials for his service to the church. As recently as Nov. 27, the pope praised Maciel in a letter on the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination for his "intense, generous and fruitful priestly ministry."
The accusers - two Mexican-Americans, five Mexicans and two Spaniards, one now deceased - tried for years without success to call their accusations to the attention of the pope.
Juan Vaca of Holbrooke, N.Y., one of the men who says he was subjected to years of abuse by Maciel, was delighted when he heard the news from a colleague in Spain on Sunday.
"Is this a move commanded from the Vatican?" he wondered in an e-mail to former Legionaries. "Could this be the beginning of the end for Marcial Maciel, and the first step for our Justice? Who knows? Let us keep praying."
Vaca is a former priest who headed the Legion's U.S. operations in Connecticut from 1971 to 1976. He now teaches psychology at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
Gerald Renner, The Hartford Courant, 1/25/05
UPDATE – Vatican says no church action planned against Legionaries' founder
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican has confirmed that it plans no canonical process against the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, investigated for alleged sexual abuse of teenagers under his care.
The Vatican confirmation came after the Legionaries issued a May 20 statement saying that "there is no canonical process under way into our founder, Father Marcial Maciel, LC, nor will one be initiated." Father Maciel has consistently denied the accusations made against him.
The confirmation was issued by Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman, after Catholic News Service asked him about the Legionaries' statement.
The decision not to start a canonical process comes after Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, an official of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, traveled to Mexico and the United States earlier this year to interview adults who said they were abused by Father Maciel, now 85, when they were teenage seminarians of the Legionaries.
"We hold no grudge against those who accuse us; rather, we keep them in our prayers while expressing our humblest gratitude to the countless people of good will who in these circumstances have reiterated to us their support and esteem," said the Legionaries' statement.
The statement also quoted Father Maciel as denying the accusations.
"I can categorically state that the accusations brought against me are false. I never engaged in the sort of repulsive behavior these men accuse me of," Father Maciel is quoted as saying.
Nine former Legionaries, one of whom is now dead, have publicly accused Father Maciel of sexually abusing them when they were teenage seminarians in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.
One of the accusers is Juan J. Vaca, a psychology professor at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and a former Legionary priest.
In a January interview with CNS, Vaca said he was pursuing the case against Father Maciel although "my personal feeling at this point is that I've lost all trust in Vatican officials."
Vaca said that when he was being abused in his seminary days he once told Father Maciel that he needed to go to confession about those incidents. Vaca says Father Maciel tried to dissuade him, but when he was insistent the priest said, "Here, I will give you absolution," and made a sign of the cross over him.
Vaca said several other seminarians reported similar incidents.
After earlier complaints to the Vatican brought no response, in 1998 the eight living accusers drew up another case against Father Maciel, accusing him of giving absolution to an accomplice in a sexual sin.
Earlier this year Vaca and several other accusers were informed by the Vatican that the case was being looked into.
Father Maciel founded the Legionaries in 1941 in his native Mexico. Currently it has about 600 priests and 2,500 seminarians worldwide, including more than 75 priests in the United States.
His work has been praised by Vatican officials, including the late Pope John Paul II.
Father Maciel received public congratulations from Pope John Paul last Nov. 30 at the end of a week of celebrations in Rome marking the 60th anniversary of the priest's ordination.
The late pope praised Father Maciel's "intense, generous and fruitful priestly ministry" and said that ministry has been "full of the gifts of the Holy Spirit."
During the celebrations Pope John Paul also entrusted the Legionaries with administration of the Notre Dame Center, a complex with a conference center, 150 guest rooms and other facilities that serves as the Vatican's main pilgrimage and cultural institution in Jerusalem. The pope also formally approved the statutes of Regnum Christi, a lay movement affiliated with the Legionaries.
This piece has
