Book on Legion of Christ Sex Abuse Scandal to Overshadow Pope's Visit to Mexico

I have long maintained that the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal epitomizes the moral bankruptcy of the Roman Catholic Church's utter moral bankruptcy. However, few of the disgusting vile stories track directly to the Vatican than that of Rev. Marciel Maciel, the Mexican founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who was a drug addict and pedophile - and a protected favorite of the far less than saintly Pope John Paul II. The story of Marceil is an indictment of both John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI who as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a/k/a the Inquisition, knew full well about the horrible and tawdry behavior of Marceil. Thankfully, a new book on the sins and sexual abuse of Marceil is being released just in time for Pope Benedict XVI's disingenuous PR trip to Mexico. In my view, Benedict XVI needs to have Marceil hung around his neck. Yes, his apologists will try to shift blame to John Paul II, but Benedict XVI could have done more to stop Marceil and he chose not to do so. Failures to act can be just as damning as acts of malfeasance. Here are some highlights from Huffington Post on what is likely to greet the Nazi Pope:

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Mexico this week to a very public reminder of one of the Catholic Church's most egregious sex abuse scandals: A new book says internal Vatican documents show the Holy See knew decades ago of allegations that the Mexican founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order was a drug addict and pedophile.

The documentation has been compiled in a book "La voluntad de no saber" ("The will to not know"), which is co-authored by Jose Barba, a former Legion priest who along with other priests in 1998 brought a church trial against the Legion's founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, for having sexually abused them while they were seminarians.

While details of the abuse were made public years ago, the new documents seem to solidify proof that the Vatican knew of the allegations long before taking action. Excerpts of the book were published by the Mexican magazine Proceso on Sunday.

"The importance of this book is that it documents the irrefutable evidence and proof that the Vatican has been lying about Maciel," said Bernardo Barranco, an expert from the Religious Studies Center of Mexico and author of the prologue of the new text.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict, headed the office that received their complaint in 1998, but it took the Vatican eight years to sanction Maciel for the crimes, while the accusers were branded as liars and discredited by the Legion.

Maciel, meanwhile, continued to enjoy Pope John Paul II's highest regard as the founder of one of the world's fastest-growing religious orders, able to attract money and vocations to the church despite the mounting accusations against him. . . . . Benedict took over the Legion in 2010 after the order finally admitted Maciel had molested seminarians and fathered three children with two women. A Vatican investigation determined Maciel, who died in 2008, was a religious fraud who had built an order based on silence and obedience that allowed his double life to go unchecked.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Barba said the book was based on information from some 212 documents in a Vatican archive that he said he had obtained from unnamed church officials.

The documentation, he said, demonstrates that the Vatican had information against Maciel as early as 1944 and particularly in the mid-1950s, when the Holy See launched its first investigation into the Mexican-born Maciel. The so-called apostolic visitation lasted from 1956 to 1958, during which time Maciel was suspended as the Legion's superior, though he was subsequently reinstalled.

The documents "show with complete clarity that the Vatican knew the true nature of this man, the accusations, the opinion of experts, the revision of other experts on top of previous experts, and the opinions that the apostolic visitors gave," Barba said.

"The revelation of these documents, previously unknown to the great majority of Legionaries who acted in good faith, shows that there were solid grounds for the removal of Fr. Maciel more than 50 years ago," Gill said in an email, calling anew for the Vatican to further investigate how Maciel could have hidden his behavior from public view for so long.

The Catholic blogger Cassandra Jones, for example, has cited letters sent in 1956 from the bishops of Cuernavaca, Mexico, and Mexico City to the Vatican's office for religious orders recommending Maciel's removal and a Vatican investigation into what Cuernavaca's then-bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo termed "devious and lying behavior, use of narcotic drugs, acts of sodomy with boys of the congregation."

But "La Voluntad de no saber," which comes out on Benedict's first full day in Mexico, promises more complete documentation from the Vatican's own archives. While the book is only being published in Spanish in Mexico with an initial run of 6,000 copies, the documentation will be available on a website, , organizers said. http://www.lavoluntaddenosaber.com

Benedict himself has acknowledged Maciel was a "false prophet" but has insisted that he only learned the true nature of the allegations against Maciel in 2000. His office received Barba's complaint in 1998 and the Vatican's office for religious orders received the Mexican bishops' charges in 1956.

Barba and other victims have said they would never agree to a meeting with Benedict since it was his old office – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – that sat on the case for eight years while they suffered the Legion's defamation campaign to discredit them.

"For nothing in the world would I ever meet with someone who protected Maciel when he should have been punished," said Jose Antonio Perez Olvera, a former Legionary who was sexually abused by Maciel. "We don't make deals with criminals, nor with those who were their protectors and accomplices."

Sadly, too many Catholics refuse to admit that the Vatican is a foul criminal enterprise that has protected child rapists on literally a global basis. And if the sex abuse wasn't enough in and of itself to expose the criminality of the Vatican, now it appears that the Vatican Bank may have been laundering money - something that has caused JP Morgan Chase to close accounts with the Vatican Bank. The Daily Beast has coverage on this new banking scandal. Here are some excerpts:

The Vatican is in public-relations panic-mode ... again. But it’s not the pedophile priest scandal or Vatileaks that has the pope’s image-makers hopping. This time the Holy See faces serious allegations that its curious accounting practices are really a cover for a money-laundering scheme.

On March 30, the Milan branch of the global investment bank JPMorgan Chase will officially close the Vatican bank’s account No. 1365—held by the Institute for Works of Religion, or the IOR—on speculation that the account is being used for less-than-immaculate financial deeds. JPMorgan Chase sent a letter to the Vatican on Feb. 15 to notify them of the closure after the Vatican bankers were “unable to respond” to a series of requests about questionable money transfers from the account. The JPMorgan Chase account was a “sweeping facility” that was zeroed out at the end of each business day. The account, which was opened in 2009, had processed some $1.5 billion in funds to other Vatican accounts—mostly in Germany—during the short time it was open, . . . . the fact that Vatican bankers couldn’t quite explain the reason they moved so much money in such a short period of time led the bank to close the account.

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department named the Holy See on a list of its own, as a “jurisdiction of concern” for money-laundering practices in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, alongside countries like Honduras and Syria.

“The best way for the Vatican to come clean would of course be to close the bank: it’s hard to see why it’s needed other than to shroud the Church’s financial dealings in a veil of obsessive secrecy,” he [Reuters financial columnist Pierre Briançon] wrote in a recent blog post. “Barring such a radical exorcism, a clean sweep is in order.”

Sexual abuse of children, protecting and covering up for sexual predators and money laundering - what does it take to make rank and file Catholics to open their eyes to the truth about the putrid Church leadership in Rome? If one has a shred of moral decency, I honestly do not understand how they can continue to hand money over the the Catholic Church.