Marcial Maciel

Marcial Maciel Degollado (March 10, 1920 – January 30, 2008) was a Mexican Catholic priest who founded the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement, serving as general director of the Legion from 1941 to 2005. He was respected throughout most of his career as "the greatest fundraiser of the modern Roman Catholic church" and as a prolific recruiter of new seminarians. Late in his life, Maciel was revealed to have sexually abused boys and young men and maintained relationships with at least two women, fathering as many as six children. He allegedly abused two of these.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI removed Maciel from active ministry based on the results of an investigation started under John Paul II concerning sexual impropriety. Maciel was ordered "to conduct a reserved life of prayer and penance, renouncing every public ministry," and died in 2008. On March 25, 2010, a communiqué on the Legion's website acknowledged as factual the "reprehensible actions" by Maciel, including sexual abuse of minor seminarians. In May 2010 the Vatican denounced Maciel's actions and appointed a Papal Delegate to oversee the order and its governance.

Maciel was born in Cotija, Michoacán, Mexico, to a family with strong connections to the Catholic Church. Numerous relatives were priests in the Church. He had a troubled youth. Maciel is the grand-nephew of Bishop Rafael Guízar Valencia, who was canonized as a Mexican saint in 2007. There has been speculation that conduct by Maciel at age 18 contributed to the death of this great uncle, who had a heart attack. According to an investigative report:

The day before Bishop Guizar died, he had been heard shouting angrily at Marcial Maciel. He was giving his eighteen-year-old nephew a dressing down after two women had come to the bishop's house to complain about Maciel, who was their neighbor. Father Orozco, who was among the original group of boys to found the Legion of Christ in 1941, said he heard the women had complained about the "noise" Maciel was making with children he had brought into his home to teach religion. He said that the seminary officials blamed Maciel for his uncle's heart attack.

Maciel was expelled from two seminaries for reasons that have never been revealed. He became a priest only after one of his uncles ordained him on November 26, 1944 in Mexico City after he completed private studies.

Maciel founded the Legion of Christ in 1941, with the support of Francisco González Arias, Bishop of Cuernavaca. From the beginning, he served as its general director. In 1959 Maciel founded its lay arm Regnum Christi.

Through the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi, Maciel started many schools, a network of universities, and numerous charitable institutes.

In 1997, a group of nine men went public with accusations that they had been abused as youths and young men by Maciel while studying under him in Spain and Rome in the 1940s and 1950s. The group, which included respectable academics and former priests, lodged formal charges at the Vatican in 1998. They were told the following year that the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict, would not prosecute Maciel because of his age.

In January 2005 Maciel stepped down as head of the order. A few days before John Paul II died, Cardinal Ratzinger announced his intention of removing "filth" from the Church; many believed he was referring specifically to Maciel. After an investigation had been re-opened by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican requested that Maciel withdraw from his active ministry. In May 2006, Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, disciplined him: the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asked Maciel to live "a reserved life of penitence and prayer, relinquishing any form of public ministry.” A canonical trial was ruled out, officially because of his advanced age and poor health. In January 2006 Maciel stepped down as head of the Legion of Christ and tendered its leadership to long-time follower Fr. Álvaro Corcuera Martínez del Río.

In 2007 the order was told to remove the obedience vows requiring religious never to criticise superiors and to inform on any dissent within the order. Maciel moved from Rome to a house he shared with other priests in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, where he died in 2008. He never made any apologies and continued to deny the allegations. Fr Alvaro Corcuera, his successor, did apologize to the victims both for Maciel's actions and the inaction of others.

Marcial Maciel died in Jacksonville, Florida, on January 30, 2008, at age 87. He had a private funeral and was buried in his birthplace, Cotija, Michoacán, in early February 2008.

Drug addiction

During his life, Maciel was the focus of several investigations of his behavior. There were allegations of drug abuse , for which he was investigated in 1956; he was hospitalised for morphine addiction. He was also investigated for allegedly sexually abusing children. He was returned as head of the Congregation.

Mistresses and children

In July 2009, a Spanish daily published an interview with a woman who had a child with Maciel in 1986 and was living in a luxury apartment in Madrid which Maciel had purchased for her. A day later, Mexican media reported that attorney José Bonilla would represent three of a possible total of six of Maciel's natural children in a civil lawsuit to recover Maciel's estate. The lawyer claimed that Maciel owned several properties in Mexico and around the world in his own name.

In February 2009, news broke that Maciel had led a double life. Fr. Álvaro Corcuera Martínez del Río, LC, the General Director, visited each of the Legionary Territories and publicly apologized for Maciel's behaviour. Additionally, the Legion has publicly acknowledged that Maciel had fathered a daughter. As a result of all these acknowledgements, Pope Benedict XVI personally intervened and initiated a formal Vatican visitation of all Legionary houses.

Plagiarism

In 1959 Maciel published a book, El salterio de mis días (The Psalter of My Days), which was widely read among members of the Legion and partially translated into English. It was a memoir of experiences of persecution.

On December 11, 2009, the Agencia Católica de Informaciones of Lima, Peru, sister agency of the Catholic News Agency, reported that a Legion of Christ internal memorandum acknowledged, without using the word "plagiarism," that the book copied the memoir of Luis Lucia, a Spanish journalist and Christian Democrat politician. Although the Legion's memorandum described Maciel's book as "a slight rewriting," a Spanish Legionary familiar with it stated that it copied Lucia's memoir "80 percent in style and content."

Lucia's memoir was titled El salterio de mis horas (The Psalter of My Hours). He completed it in 1941 while a political prisoner of the Franco regime; it was published posthumously in Spain in 1956; that edition is believed to have been used by Maciel as the basis of his own work.

Called to accompany Pope John Paul II on his visits to Mexico in 1979, 1990, and 1993, Maciel was appointed by the Pope to the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Formation of Priests in Circumstances of the Present Day (1990). He was a member of the Interdicasterial Commission for a Just Distribution of Clergy (1991), the IV General Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) (1992), the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Consecrated Life and Its Role in the Church and in the World (1994), the Synod of Bishops' Special Assembly for America (1997) and (since 1994) as a permanent consultant to the Congregation for the Clergy. The golden anniversary of his priestly ordination was celebrated on 26 November 1994, with 57 Legionary priests ordained on the anniversary's eve. Maciel served as Chancellor of the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, which is based in Rome.

Maciel collaborated extensively with the pope, either in person or through members of his organization, the Legion of Christ. Pope John Paul II admired Maciel for strictly adhering to the magisterium and the vocations to the Legion of Christ. He received many donations from Mexico's richest. Maciel and the Legion gave the Vatican considerable funding. Some journalists have speculated for years that this financial influence was the reason the Church postponed acting on allegations of sex abuse by Maciel.

Investigative journalist Jason Berry wrote in an April 2010 article in the National Catholic Reporter that "the charismatic" founder of the Legion of Christ "sent streams of money to Roman curia officials with a calculated end ... Maciel was buying support for his group and defence for himself, should his astounding secret life become known." Berry and his late colleague Gerald Renner wrote the 2004 book Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II, and the related TV documentary Vows of Silence on Father Maciel and the Legion of Christ. According to Berry, Maciel's key supporters, who provided him with a protective shield, included Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state from 1991 to 2006, under both popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI; Cardinal Eduardo Martínez Somalo, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; and Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Polish secretary of John Paul II (1978-2005).

The New York Times reported claims that even under Cardinal Ratzinger, who took an immediate interest in the case, the investigation into Maciel remained stalled. "Other factors delayed a reckoning. Some questioned the accounts of abuse; one of the original nine complainants recanted."

Maciel wrote extensively on the formation of priests and other matters pertaining to Church governance. His main stated purpose for the Legion of Christ was to form and motivate enterprising lay members of the Catholic Church to take an active part in the Church's mission. In particular, this initiative focused on the members of the movement Regnum Christi, for example, through spiritual direction. Regnum Christi was founded by Maciel as well.

Formal denunciation

In March 2009 Pope Benedict ordered an apostolic visitation of the Legionaries of Christ. Five bishops from five different countries, working independently of each other, conducted "an extensive investigation which took them to nearly every one of the religious order's houses" and on March 15, 2010 submitted their report to the Vatican. On May 1, 2010, after a two-day meeting in Rome with the bishops, the Vatican issued a statement on the report and announced that the Pope would name a delegate to the Legion and a visitator to Regnum Christi, because the "conduct of [Maciel] has given rise to serious consequences in the life and structure of the Legion, such as to require a process of profound re-evaluation." In its statement the Vatican denounced Maciel for having created a system of power that enabled him to lead an "immoral" double life "devoid of scruples and authentic religious meaning." The Vatican statement was unusually explicit in its denunciation of Maciel's crimes and deception.

The "very serious and objectively immoral acts" of Maciel, which were "confirmed by incontrovertible testimonies," represented "true crimes and manifest a life without scruples or authentic religious sentiment," the Vatican said. The Vatican also stated that the Legion created a "mechanism of defense" around Maciel to shield him from accusations and suppress damaging witnesses from reporting abuse. "It made him untouchable," the Vatican said. The statement decried the "lamentable disgracing and expulsion of those who doubted" Maciel's virtue. The Vatican statement did not address whether the Legion's leadership would face any sanctions. The Vatican acknowledged the "hardships" faced by Maciel's accusers through the years when they were ostracized or ridiculed, and commended their "courage and perseverance to demand the truth."