Father Marcial Maciel And The Popes Who Protected Him

By now the worldwide pattern of sexual abuse of children and minors by Catholic Church clergy is all to well known: wanton abuse followed by superiors who engaged in cover ups and allowed the abuse to continue, often in a new unsuspecting venue.  What is unusual and shocking about the wanton sexual abuse perpetrated by Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legion of Christ, is that his protectors were none other that Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  While Benedict XVI was ultimately forced to act against Maciel because the volume of evidence could no longer be covered up, he waited many years after it had become clear that Maciel was a dangerous predator.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this horrible picture of abuse and cover up motivated in part by the Catholic Church's true god: money and Maciel's ability to raise it in large quantities.  Here are some story excerpts:

Marcial Maciel Degollado, a priest from Mexico with an extravagant name, was the greatest fundraiser for the postwar Catholic Church and equally its greatest criminal.

“A life ... out of moral bounds,” is how Pope Benedict XVI described Maciel in a 2010 interview, two years after Maciel’s death. A “wasted, twisted life.”

And a life that exposed shocking flaws in the Vatican and the papacy. The saga of Father Maciel opens a rare view onto the flow of money in the Roman Curia across the last half century, a time during which his rise to power and late-life crash into scandal stained the campaign for John Paul II’s sainthood and became a quagmire for Benedict XVI.

In the late 1940s, Maciel began sexually plundering teenage seminarians in the religious order he founded, the Legion of Christ. He also shuttled between Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain, courting benefactors like a senator with silk between the fingers, portraying his Legionaries as a force of resurgent orthodoxy, himself a fearless foe of communism.

That message had booming resonance in Mexico, a heavily Catholic country seared by memories of lethal anticlerical persecutions set in motion by the Calles regime in the 1930s, a milieu powerfully evoked in Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory. Maciel won government support for seminary scholarships in Madrid, after the Spanish Civil War cemented ties between Francisco Franco’s dictatorship and the Catholic hierarchy. Wealthy industrialists and patricians from the Spanish-speaking world poured money into Maciel’s fledgling order.

Legionaries called their leader Nuestro Padre (Our Father). They were taught that their founder was a living saint. They took private vows, swearing never to criticize Maciel or their superiors and to report on anyone who did. The cultlike insular culture Maciel molded would reward spying as an act of faith and shield Nuestro Padre from scrutiny as the youngest victims grew up and left the order, returning to Mexico and years of grappling with his traumatic impact on their lives.

In 1956 at the Legion seminary in Rome, Maciel spun out of control from an addiction to a morphine painkiller. A priest and older seminarian complained to the Vatican, which prompted an investigation that sent Maciel to a hospital briefly and removed him as superior general. But with no public notice of his suspension, Maciel kept traveling, raising money to complete construction on Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica in Rome. His victims, bound by the private vows, lied to defend him, as they would admit in interviews many years later.

  
In 1976 Vaca bolted to the Long Island diocese of Rockville Centre. He wrote a 12-page single-spaced letter to Maciel, identifying 20 other victims, “good and gifted young boys ... [subjected to] aberrant and sacrilegious abuse.” Bishop John Raymond McGann included Vaca’s letter in a dossier to the Vatican suggesting that it investigate. The letter was acknowledged; nothing happened. The bishop and Vaca wrote again in 1978, when John Paul II became pope.

In 1989 Vaca sent a long, detailed letter to John Paul in a dossier from his Long Island diocese, via Vatican diplomatic pouch, again including his original statement naming Maciel’s victims. This time he wrote more directly, telling John Paul that because of the abuse, he never should have been ordained. He was about to marry and wanted release from his vows. Several years later Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a document granting that, but on the Maciel charges—again, nothing.

As Legion money flowed through the Curia, seminarians drove across Rome in the days before Christmas, delivering baskets with fine wines and $1,000 Spanish hams to favored officials.

Barba, Vaca, and others found their way to me. Meanwhile, Gerald Renner of The Hartford Courant was reporting on men leaving a Legion seminary—an environment they found overly repressive—in Connecticut. Renner and I connected for a joint Courant assignment. The February 23, 1997, report exposed a history of pedophilia by Maciel through nine victims on the record. The Vatican refused comment. Maciel claimed innocence, but refused to be interviewed. The Legion counterattacked with a website denouncing the accusers as fomenting a conspiracy against Maciel.

Sodano pressured Ratzinger to overlook the charges. And John Paul ignored the allegations, continuing his praise of Maciel.   Not until 2004, when Maciel was 84 and John Paul was dying, did Ratzinger dispatch trusted canon lawyer Charles Scicluna to investigate the allegations.

At that point the Vatican, which had known about the daughter for four and a half years, announced an investigation of the Legion. In 2010 the Vatican took the scandal-battered order into receivership, something unique in the modern church. Benedict appointed a delegate (read: overseer), Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, a canon lawyer with a background in economics. Among his first duties, after the pope ordered the abolition of the private vows, was to rewrite the Legion’s constitution.

But by then, John Paul’s denial and Benedict’s soft-glove punishment became a liability as information began surfacing.

Why didn’t the Vatican release all the information on Maciel in 2006, when Benedict sent him off to a life of penance? Barba, who filed a 1998 case seeking Maciel’s ouster and has become a news celebrity in Mexico with his forceful analysis of breaking information, is convinced that Ratzinger, after becoming pope, wanted to minimize the damage done by John Paul’s failure, knowing Rome would push to make John Paul a saint. In spring 2011 Benedict beatified John Paul, the step before sainthood. It would be a dicey move for the next pope to take the final step. When Benedict flew to Mexico in spring 2012, he faced damaging media coverage for his failure to meet with Maciel’s victims. As long as those men live, any movement on the story of John Paul’s sainthood should be balanced with the reality of those, like Barba and Vaca, who sent John Paul all the messages he needed, but that he failed to heed, choosing instead to bless the myth of Nuestro Padre.

Sex, Lies and the Vatican

If one wants an evening soap opera like plot complete with lies, scheming, criminal conspiracies, illicit sex and much more, then one need look no farther than the Vatican according to a new book entitled Vatican Diaries released a little over a week ago.  Yet somehow the nasty old men that inhabit the Vatican's halls and palaces think they are fit to be the moral arbiters to over a billion Catholics even as the are the epitome of un-Christian conduct.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the new book and the snake pit that lies behind the lavish exterior of the Vatican.  Here are some excerpts:

Vatican insider John Thavis always had a hunch Pope Benedict XVI would retire. But he had no idea it would coincide with the release of his book Vatican Diaries, which was published on February 21. “I’d like to say I had planned it that way,” he told The Daily Beast in the Vatican’s press office days after the papal resignation. “But it was just a happy coincidence.”

Thavis’s book is a notebook dump of sorts gathered from 30 years working as a Catholic News Service Vaticanista—the official term used for Rome journalists who have personal cellphone numbers for cardinals and high-ranking Roman Curia prelates. While his book would have been interesting for Church watchers before Benedict’s resignation, it will surely become a veritable handbook on all things Vatican now that the world is watching who the cardinal electors choose as a new pope. 

On one papal trip, the Vatican press spokesman actually reworded a statement Benedict made on abortion and excommunication that Thavis felt crossed the line. “Editing Pope Benedict’s extemporaneous comments had been a com­mon practice from the very first day of his pontificate,” Thavis writes.  .  .  .  .  The idea of a midlevel bureaucrat fine-tuning Pope Benedict’s language may sound strange, but it reflects a deeply entrenched conviction that the actual words a pope pronounces are not definitive until the ‘official version’ is published. Usually the editing was merely annoying, but in this case it was an attempt to rewrite reality.”

Thavis wastes no words on his condemnation of the Vatican’s handling of the various sex-abuse scandals that have rocked the church in the 30 years he has been covering the Vatican beat. He dedicates several chapters to the unsavory sex-abuse cases the Catholic Church has been involved in, and manages to explain in laymen’s terms the very complicated Legions of Christ scandal by walking through a series of investigations and interviews by high-ranking church officials including the Vatican’s promoter of justice. He focuses on the lurid life of Legions founder Father Marcial Ma­ciel Degollado and paints as vivid a character profile of the disturbingly strange man as has been written to date. Father Marcial, as he is referred to, was a favorite of Benedict’s predecessor Pope John Paul II, despite a myriad of allegations of sexual improprieties and financial corruption. Benedict, as pope, finally put an end to Marcial’s reign amid his apologies to seminarians he sexually abused and his admission that he had fathered several children with different women. “Nowhere was there any hint that the order itself bore any responsibility for a cover-up; on the contrary, the Legion’s highest officials were portraying themselves as victims of Maciel’s duplicity,” Thavis writes. “And while the Legion was admitting to the founder’s extramural heterosexual affair—he was human, after all—it re­fused to touch the more serious allegations that Maciel had turned his own seminary into a pedophilia camp.”

Thavis may not have known that his book would coincide with Benedict’s sensational resignation and a historical conclave when there is still a living pope, but he certainly was prophetic in his last chapter, which is a succinct and unapologetic tribute to the former pope. He wades through the various incarnations of Benedict’s papacy, from his gaffes to his more meaningful moments, painting a human portrait of a man who shocked the world with his resignation.

The more I learn of the lies, deceit, and abuses overseen by the Vatican, the more saddened I become that I remained a Catholic as long as I did. 

Vatican Served With Abuse Case Papers - Meanwhile, Vatican Races to Canonize John Paul II

Having followed the rampant, world wide sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church for a decade, it is pretty obvious to anyone who doesn't intentionally close their eyes and hold them tightly closed that much of the criminal conspiracy to cover up crimes against children and youths was orchestrated and directed by those in high positions at the Vatican. That includes the late John Paul II and of course, Benedict XVI who headed up today's version of the Inquisition for many years. Given this reality, one has to wonder why anyone with an IQ above a trainable mental level gives any deference or respect to these nasty old men. And it certainly shows the ridiculousness of the effort by the Neanderthal elements in the Church to declare John Paul II a saint. A criminal indictment and trial for criminal conspiracy or racketeering is much more supported by the facts. Now, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that attorneys representing victims of sexual abuse by priest have succeeding in serving court papers on the Vatican. Here are some details:
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The Vatican has been served with court papers stemming from decades-old allegations of sexual abuse against a now-deceased priest at a Wisconsin school for the deaf. Jeff Anderson, an attorney for the man making the allegations, said he had been notified the papers were filed through official diplomatic channels.
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"Every time we make a step forward, as long as that takes, we are going in the right direction," Anderson said. "And the direction we're headed is a measure of accountability. We really believe that we need to put some heat on the Vatican to bring some light."
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Kohut's lawsuit alleges Murphy molested him for several years starting around 1960 while Murphy worked at the school for the deaf. The lawsuit contends Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, and his predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodano conspired to keep quiet decades of abuse allegations against Murphy.
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Murphy, who died in 1998, allegedly sexually abused some 200 boys at the deaf school from 1950 to 1974. In 1996, Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland complained about Murphy in a letter to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the powerful Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Ratzinger from 1981 until he became pope in 2005.
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Anderson also has a pending lawsuit against the Vatican in Oregon for a man who claims he was abused at his Catholic school in the 1960s. Anderson has asked a federal judge to require the pope and the other Vatican officials to testify.
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As for the disgusting effort to canonize the Nazi Pope's predecessor, the San Jose Mercury News has an article that reviews the misdeeds of the less than saintly John Paul II. Here are highlights from that article:
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Few deny that Pope John Paul II was a towering figure of the 20th century, a great pope of great consequence. His record-fast beatification, though, has prompted questions even from some supporters who suggest the Vatican should first answer lingering concerns about the flaws of his papacy.
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And many Vatican watchers—priests and laymen alike—point to the scandal of the Legionaries of Christ as perhaps the greatest failure. The pope held up the wealthy, conservative religious order as a model of orthodoxy. Yet for years, he and his advisers actively or passively ignored allegations that its founder was a pedophile who created a twisted cult-like movement so secretive and oppressive that his crimes went unchecked for decades.
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Church historian Michael Walsh recently questioned whether it was "necessary or fitting" to beatify John Paul so soon after his death, noting that most of the people involved in the process—Benedict included—owe their jobs in some way to the late pontiff and can't be expected to be impartial.
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Even John Paul's biographer, George Weigel, says the Vatican would do well to make public how it resolved the questions about the Legion in its investigation for the beatification. Rev. Marciel Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, was eventually sanctioned by the Vatican a year after Benedict became pope, a decade after the first allegations reached the Vatican that Maciel had molested young seminarians.

Irish Times Poll: 67% Support Gay Marriage - Along With More Signs of Catholic Church European Melt Down

Ireland was once considered a bastion of Roman Catholicism and the Irish people suffered greatly for their allegiance to the Church of Roman. Now, the Catholic Church is fast losing all moral authority in Ireland - and rightfully so given the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy - and the Irish populace seems to care less about the constant anti-gay screeds issuing from the Vatican and Papa Ratzi. This has been confirmed by a new Irish Times poll that reflects that 67% of respondents support same sex marriage - something that is anathema to Rome. Frankly, there are no signs that the Church's free fall is about to halt any time soon. But Ireland is not the only European nation where the Church's toxic anti-equality influence is waning. In Scotland, the Scotsman reports that the expected crowd for Papa Ratzi's scheduled mass in Glasgow is a quarter of what greeted Pope Paul II (who we all now know was less than saintly and protected sexual predator Marcial Maceil Degollado) in 1982. Then there's Belgium where Time reports a similar downward spiral for an institution that turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children and youth on a global basis. Do I feel any pity for the Catholic Church? None whatsoever. First highlights from the Irish Times:
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JUST OVER two-thirds of people (67 per cent) believe gay couples should be allowed to marry, according to an Irish Times /Behaviour Attitudes social poll. It is one of a series of findings in a poll on “sex, sin and society” that indicates Irish people have adopted a more liberal attitude towards personal relationships and sexual behaviour.
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In addition showing strong support for gay marriage, a significant majority (60 per cent) also believe civil partnerships for gay couples will not undermine the institution of marriage. A large majority (91 per cent) also say they would not think less of a person if they revealed they were gay or lesbian. These numbers are consistently high across most age groups, as well as in urban and rural areas.
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The findings also indicate there is a growing consensus that living together before marriage is likely to result in a more stable marriage. A majority (57 per cent) believe cohabitation is a positive development. This view is reflected consistently across most age groups.
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Even higher numbers (79 per cent) do not regard sex before marriage as immoral. When broken down by religion, most Catholics – again, 79 per cent – did not see anything wrong with the practice.
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The apparent decline of the Church in Scotland is likewise significant. These highlights from The Scotsman:
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ONLY 65,000 Catholics are now expected to take part in the papal mass in Scotland tomorrow – one third fewer than originally expected and a mere fraction of the total number in the country.
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The Catholic Church denied that the controversy over the Pope's handling of the Church's child abuse scandal has undermined his imminent arrival. But critics of the visit claimed the figures revealed the extent of indifference towards the first visit by a Pope to Scotland for 28 years. The Catholic Church says more than 250,000 attended the mass in Bellahouston Park when Pope John Paul II visited in 1982.
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And lastly from Time these highlights on the continued fall out from the Church's reprehensible enabling and cover up of sexual abuse by priests over the decades:
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In the past few months, harrowing tales have emerged from almost every congregation in the country about priests raping and assaulting young parishioners. . . . Acknowledging the scale of the scandal, the head of the church in Belgium, Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, vowed to do more to help the victims, collaborate further with law enforcement and punish the abusers.
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But abuse victims immediately slammed his pledges as vague and evasive. They pointed out that the church has yet to show how it will find and punish abusive priests. They also said there is no indication the church is ready to give the police and courts full rein in investigating and prosecuting abuse allegations within the clergy.
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"The reforms are smoke and mirrors," says Barbara Blaine, president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), who flew to Brussels to hear Léonard's announcement. "These are bare-minimum, begrudging steps. Hundreds or thousands were raped and sodomized by priests, and the church has been covering it up for decades. But nothing that the bishops have offered gives us any hope that they will change."
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Ringlet suggests the church's inability to relate to real-life concerns partly explains its fading influence. While three-quarters of Belgians describe themselves as Catholic, churchgoing has slipped drastically in recent decades: 42.9% of Catholics said they attended Sunday Mass in 1967, but that figure plummeted to 7% by 2006. And the recent rash of awful headlines is only likely to speed the decline.

"It Isn't Prudent" to Stop a Sexual Predator

The New York Times and Andrew Sullivan have new coverage on the ongoing Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal that continue to confirm the moral bankruptcy - and less than saintly qualities - of former Pope John Paul II and the current occupant of the Throne of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI. I continue to focus on the Catholic Church's dirty laundry for several reasons. The first is that the Catholic Church hierarchy remains one of the leading supporters of the denigration and legal inequality of LGBT individuals. Second, the Church hierarchy and the gay-hating propaganda that it disseminates continues to ruin countless gay lives every single day. Lastly, the Church hierarchy comprises one of the most self-centered bunch of hypocrites on the planet. Only full exposure of all of the evils perpetrated will end this malevolent force in society and force desperately needed changes within the Church if it is to survive. Here are some highlights from the New York Times:
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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.
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As they left, they ran into the man who would hold Father Maciel’s fate in his hands, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and kissed his ring. The encounter was no accident. Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to meet them, witnesses later said, and their case was soon accepted. But in little more than a year, word emerged that Cardinal Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — halted the inquiry. “It isn’t prudent,” he had told a Mexican bishop, according to two people who later talked to the bishop.
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[I]t took Cardinal Ratzinger — by then Pope Benedict — until 2006, eight years after the case went before him, to address Father 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.
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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 Father Maciel’s victims say that the Vatican’s eventual investigation and reckoning in the case were too little, too late.
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Former Legion seminarians have said that Father Maciel abused them from the early 1940s to the early ’60s, when they were 10 to 16 years old. For years, Father Maciel had cultivated powerful allies among the cardinals, through gifts and cash donations, according to reporting by Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter. Mr. 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, by office, the most powerful man next to Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Angelo Sodano
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In an interview, Father Athié said Bishop 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 Father Maciel, “and had done a lot of good for the church. He said as well, ‘I am very sorry, but it isn’t prudent,’ ” Father Athié said. Saúl Barrales, a schoolteacher who once worked as Father Maciel’s secretary and is a cousin of Bishop Talavera, said he had heard the same account of the conversation from the bishop.
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The rest of the Times article bears reading. Nothing can excuse Benedict XVI for his moral failures in not pursuing Maciel. If John Paul II insisted on a cover up, Benedict should have resigned and gone public. Unfortunately, Benedict apparently put power and money ahead of morality. As I have asked before, when is Benedict going to resign? Andrew Sullivan sums it up this way:
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[T]he Pope decided not to act against a morphine-addicted, polygamous rapist of minors and his own children because the rapist was close to John Paul II. And instead of closing down a cult penetrated by this corruption to its core, he has just decided merely to give it a new head and leave much of its pre-existing leadership in place.
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Why? Because the cult still manages to bring in new priests and is worth some $35 billion. When measured against rape and incest, the money and vocations are more important to Pope Benedict XVI. So too is the fact that the Legion backs the theology and orthodoxy of the Franco-Pinochet Catholic far right.

An Argument Against John Paul II's Canonization

I have intimated before that I do not see Pope John Paul II as worthy of canonization and suspect that only the far right, Kool-Aid drinker crowd fully support such a move. Yes, he played a role in the fall of the Soviet Union, but he also played a huge role in the sex abuse scandal that continues to rock the Roman Catholic Church. He callously closed his eyes to the sexual abuse of children and tried to steer the Church back to a Medieval mindset and treated gay Catholics as less than human - hardly saintly conduct. Surprisingly, now even some ultra-conservatives - e.g., writers at Renew America - are now arguing that John Paul II is unworthy of canonization albeit from not precisely the same perspective as my own. Yes I know that it is a bit frightening that I agree with anything disseminated by Renew America, especially since the organization fully support the denigration and marginalization of gays. However, they are on the mark when they correctly focus on John Paul II's unconscionable enabling and cover up of the crimes of sexual predator priests. Here are a few highlights:

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Once again, the Catholic world has been rocked by yet more allegations of sexual impropriety by Legionnaires of Christ founder, the late Fr. Marcial Maciel. It seems the now-disgraced founder-cum-pervert fathered more children than previously suspected; the latest claimants to his paternity purport to have evidence that the late Pope John Paul II knew of Maciel's sexual dalliances, and turned a blind eye to them.

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The allegations highlight what for all too many Catholics is the elephant-in-the-room when discussing the ills which beset the modern Church: the extent to which the late Pope John Paul II was an enabler of these perversions, from sexual and liturgical abuse to theological dissent . . . his Pontificate, by all accounts, was a glorious failure. Yes, he aided in the fall of Eastern European Communism, but the Pope of Rome is not primarily a mover and shaker of state politics, but a Christian pastor . . .

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Though Catholics and others are loathe to admit it of an otherwise beloved Pope, John Paul II oversaw a church which deteriorated in both its inner and outer life. His callous indifference toward the victims of priestly sexual abuse in refusing to meet personally with a single one of them, and his stubborn refusal to compel the resignation from office of any of the bishops who aided, abetted, and covered-up the abuse, are testamentary to his utter failure: not as a Catholic or a theologian, but as a Pope.And this is precisely why he should not be canonized.

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The canonization of Pope John Paul II is an issue which concerns not only Catholics, but all traditionalist conservatives. For better or for worse (depending on one's religious outlook), the Catholic Church is the largest religious institution on the planet, and historically regarded as a fairly conservative one.

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When civil society regains its conservative bearings, history will not be kind to what any unbiased observer must regard as the gross pastoral negligence of the 21st century's first Pope; if Catholics want to come out of the present cultural quagmire with their intellectual integrity intact, they must fearlessly shed the light of truth on that Pontiff's pastorship, and be sure to end up on the right side of history's verdict.

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Again, I believe that John Paul II does not deserve canonization even if not for all the reasons cited by ultra-conservatives. His failings in addressing - if indeed not enabling - the sex abuse scandal alone renders him unworthy.

Vatican Launches Investigation Into Legionaries of Christ

In an interesting development, the Vatican is commencing an investigation into the misdeeds of the Legionaries of Christ and its late founder, Maciel Degollado. For years a number of Popes - including the less than saintly John Paul II - protected the Degollado and the Legionaries of Christ despite many allegations of Degolladro's corruption and sexual abuse of seminarians, not to mention fathering of an illegitimate daughter. One cannot help but wonder how thoroughly the Vatican wants to investigate and how open it will be about the likely dirty linen that is likely to be found. While the Legionaries are a religious order as opposed to a diocese, the corruption and cover up of sexual abuse is a stroy all too common within the Catholic Church world wide. Personally, I am not holding my breath and expecting a sincere investigation by the Vatican - especially because John Paul II was conspicuous in his support of Degollado and willingly closed his eyes to wickedness. On the other hand, the Vatican may fear that a failure to investigate will leave it open to even more charges of hypocrisy. Here are some story highlights via RawStory:

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The Vatican has launched an investigation into the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order whose secretive founder stands accused of sexually abusing numerous children over decades.

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And the investigation may have to grapple with an uncomfortable question: If the entire religious order was based on lies and deception, should it be disbanded? In an article at GlobalPost, reporter Jason Berry states: The issue facing Benedict has no precedent in modern church history: whether to dismantle a movement with a $650 million budget yet only about 700 priests and 2,500 seminarians, or to keep the brand name and try to reform an organization still run as a cult of personality to its founder. Excessive materialism and psychological coercion tactics continue Maciel’s legacy.

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In the 1990s, as sex abuse scandals linked to the Catholic church came to light, victims of Degollado's sexual abuse began to come forward. Though the Vatican first recognized the claims in 1998, it wasn't until 2004 that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Pope John Paul II's right-hand man, launched the first inquiry into Degollado's actions. Starting in 2004, at least 30 witnesses testified to Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the C.D.F. investigator, that Maciel abused them as youths. But the 2006 Vatican order punishing Maciel failed to specify what exactly he had done, nor did it acknowledge the victims.

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In Maciel's case, it took 30 years – until 2006, after John Paul's death – for the new pope, Benedict XVI, finally to issue a public rebuke, and then it was simply an order that he should see out his days in private prayer rather than face a court. The long delay is evidence, some have suggested, that the Vatican still does not take the issue of paedophile priests sufficiently seriously.
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Numerous conservative Catholics are hell bent to have John Paul II name a saint, but his continued refusal to act against or lift a finger to protect against sexual abuse is hardly the conduct of a saint. I can only assume that John Paul II did not want to turn off the money spigot that the Legionaries came to represent. Having been a Knight of Columbus - a Catholic fraternal organization with billions of dollars of assets - nothing talks like money within the Church hierarchy.

Sex Predator Protected by Pope John Paul II, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, has Died

As Whispers in the Loggia reports (http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/01/developing-fr-marcial-maciel-degollado.html), Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, the controversial founder of the Legionaries of Christ, died yesterday aged 87. After great efforts by Pope John Paul II to deflect any investigations into allegations of sexual abuse by Dellollado, he was ultimately given less than a resounding reprimanded by Nazi-Pope, Benedict XVI in 2006. Degollado represents perhaps one of the most aggregious cases of high clerics in the Catholic Church acting to protect a sexual predator. The National Catholic Reporter in a lengthy article has details of Degolloado's abuse of minors and the Vatican's efforts to protect him. This case in my opinion shows why the move to canonize John PaulII is not only ridiculous but yet another scandal. Saints do not protect such monsters. Here are some highlights from the NCR's december, 2001, story(http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/120701/120701g.htm):

Without explanation, the Vatican has halted a canon law investigation of one of the most powerful priests in Rome, accused by nine men of sexually abusing them years ago as young seminarians. The allegations focus on the actions of Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the 81-year old leader of the Legion of Christ, a wealthy religious order known for its theological conservatism and loyalty to the pope. Maciel has been praised by Pope John Paul II as “an efficacious guide to youth.”

The men say Maciel first abused them when they were young boys or teenagers between the ages of 10 and 16, sometimes telling them he had permission from Pope Pius XII to engage in sexual acts with them in order to gain relief from pain related to an unspecified stomach ailment.

The accusers -- seven Mexicans and two Spaniards -- tried for many years to reach Pope John Paul II with information on Maciel, a Mexican national who founded the Legion in the 1940s. Letters by two of the men, sent to John Paul in 1978, and again in 1989, both by diplomatic pouch, brought no reply.

On Feb. 23, 1997, the group went public with their accusations in The Hartford Courant, a major newspaper in Connecticut, where the Legion has its U.S. headquarters. The men include Fr. Felix Alarcon, a retired priest in good standing in Madrid; Juan Vaca, a psychology professor in New York; Arturo Jurado, a professor at the U.S. Defense Languages School in Monterrey, Calif; and in Mexico, Jose Barba, a Harvard-trained scholar of Latin American studies; Jose Antonio Perez, a lawyer; Alejandro Espinosa, a rancher; Fernando Perez, an engineer; and Saul Barrales, a school teacher. A ninth accuser, Juan Manuel Fernandez Amenabar, a former priest and university president, left a statement of alleged abuse and gave accounts to several witnesses before his death in 1995.

In recent years, the accusers have expressed guilt for not reporting Maciel during the 1950s-era investigation. At that time, however, sexual abuse was a taboo subject, they note. Some also said that Legion of Christ members pledge loyalty to Maciel and the order, so they faced a violation of their oath if they gave a negative report, risking expulsion from the seminary.

The Vatican refused to make any comment at all to the Courant or to the Mexican media when it did follow-up stories in 1997. Although the pope later appointed Maciel to a synod of bishops, the Vatican has never made a formal statement on the allegations or on Maciel’s countercharge of a conspiracy against him.

Fortunately, in 2005, the case was reopened. At the time, then Cardinal Ratzinger said that, "lamentably, the case of Father Maciel could not be opened because he was a person very loved by the pope and had done so much good for the church." Ultimately, the investigation resulted in the Degollado's forced dismissal from the clerical state, and the Holy See -- now with Ratzinger as Pope -- triangulated its response. Issuing its decision in May 2006, the dicastery allowed the once-omnipresent Maciel to remain a priest, albeit one "invited" to "a reserved life of prayer and penance, renouncing all public ministry." Such is justice within the Roman Catholic Church. Kid gloves and deference for the abuser and indifference for the victioms. What would Jesus say?