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	Controversy Dogged Legionaries Founder, Who Was a Holy Man to Many Followers By José de Córdoba The Wall Street Journal February 9, 2008 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120250667875554777.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Father Marcial Maciel, 87, the founder of a powerful and wealthy Roman Catholic religious order, was a holy man to thousands of his followers but an unrepentant sinner to former seminarians who accused him of sexual abuse. Controversy followed Father Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, to his grave in Cotija de la Paz, his small and dusty hometown in Mexico's Catholic heartland. Father Maciel, who died Jan. 30, left Cotija decades ago on a journey that took him to the Vatican, where in 1941, at age 20, he founded the Legionaries of Christ with a small group of. But for other Catholics, Father Maciel was a fraud, a morally corrupt man and a prime example of the scourge of child-abuse scandals and coverups that have plagued the Church in recent years. In 1997, eight former Legionaries -- one an active priest -- accused the founder, in a lengthy article published in the Hartford Courant, of having molested them as young seminarians during the 1940s and 1950s. Father Maciel denied the accusations. The following year, the Vatican organization that investigated such charges -- then under the direction of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI -- tabled a formal canonical complaint filed with Church authorities. But even as John Paul lay dying in 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger, who has recently revived the inquiry, sent a top investigator to interview Father Maciel's accusers in Mexico City and New York. Soon after, Father Maciel, citing his advanced age, resigned as head of the Legion. In 2006, in a move that surprised many, the Vatican, under Pope Benedict, ordered Father Maciel to "a life of prayer and penitence," and prohibited him from holding Mass in public. Noting his age and failed health, the Vatican dropped the canonical proceeding against him. For some of his accusers, the Vatican rebuke didn't go far enough. But the Legion has never accepted Father Maciel's guilt. At the time of the Vatican announcement, Father Maciel refused to defend himself and said he was accepting his "new cross" with a tranquil conscience. For many of his most militant followers, Father Maciel is the victim of a conspiracy of false accusations made by the former seminarians. They believe that history will prove Father Maciel innocent and that eventually he will be canonized a saint.
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