Accusers of Legionaries' founder say Vatican is too lenient, sent wrong message

Catholic News Service/May 26, 2006
By Jason Lange

Mexico City - Men who say the founder of the Legionaries of Christ sexually abused them when they were teenagers criticized the Vatican for what they see as its leniency toward their former mentor.

The Vatican recently asked 86-year-old Father Marcial Maciel Degollado not to exercise his priestly ministry publicly after investigating the claims made by nine former Legionary seminarians. At the same time, the Vatican said it would not begin a canonical process against Father Maciel because of his advanced age and poor health.

The Vatican said it decided to "call the priest to a life reserved to prayer and penance," but Father Maciel's accusers were pressing for a formal acknowledgment of his guilt, a conclusion that could only have come through a canonical process.

"That the church lets him off and invites him to meditate, that is not a legal process," said Jose Barba Marti, who said Father Maciel sexually abused him at the age of 16 in Rome.

Barba told Catholic News Service that the decision not to put Father Maciel on canonical trial - and subsequently defrock him - sends a dangerous message to other priests that "this isn't that serious."

"We don't want revenge, but we have been waiting a long time and we thought there would be more coherence" in the Vatican's resolution of the case, said the former Legionary.

Father Maciel, who founded the Legionaries of Christ in his native Mexico in 1941, is the most prominent Catholic official to be disciplined by the Vatican for alleged involvement in sexual abuse. Father Maciel has repeatedly denied the accusations.

Barba, who left the Legionaries of Christ in 1962 and is now a history professor at Mexico City's ITAM university, said he has been meeting with the other former Legionaries who publicly accused Father Maciel, and was authorized to speak for the group. "We are united in this statement," he said.

The Legionaries of Christ said in a May 19 statement that Father Maciel has, "following the example of Jesus Christ, decided not to defend himself in any way."

The sex abuse accusations against Father Maciel were brought to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1998, along with the accusation that he absolved in confession people who were his accomplices in sexual sins - an act punishable by automatic excommunication.

Barba said he and the others began to let church figures know about the alleged abuses shortly after they happened.

"The church had a long file on (Father) Marcial Maciel since the 1940s and it didn't do anything -- there was a cover-up," he said.

Mexican bishops said they supported the Vatican's actions in the case, and some said they believe Father Maciel is innocent.

"None of the accusations against him have been proven," said Bishop Ramon Godinez Flores of Aguascalientes May 22, reported The Associated Press.

Bishop Godinez said the Vatican's statement on Father Maciel should not be viewed as a punishment.

Taking a different tack, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of Guadalajara told Notimex news agency that the case was a cause for grief.

"I think it saddens the entire church," he said May 19. "Being who he was, the founder of a very strong religious movement, it's sad. He can only be put in God's hands."