By Ann Marie Somma
The Hartford Courant
February 5, 2009
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-maciel0205.artfeb05,0,7928744.story
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| Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado |
An international religious order with its U.S. headquarters in Orange, and a seminary in Cheshire, is dealing with the shocking revelation that its founder fathered at least one child with a mistress.
The Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the powerful leader of the Legionaries of Christ who had been accused of sexually abusing young seminarians years ago, was stripped of priestly duties two years before dying in 2008.
A spokesman for the religious order said Wednesday that the seminary in Cheshire and others throughout the United States were recently informed, with compassion, of inappropriate behavior on Maciel's part.
Asked about the allegation, the spokesman, Jim Fair, said, "We know that he had a relationship with a woman and there is a child," but he would not go into detail.
"This is surprising and it's difficult to understand," Fair said "Father Maciel now stands before God's judgment and mercy."
In 1997, Courant reporter Gerald Renner and Jason Berry, a New Orleans-based writer, documented in The Courant how, after decades of silence, nine former seminarians from Mexico and Spain accused Maciel of abusing them during a period from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Maciel and the Legionaries denied the allegations, and the Vatican, under Pope John Paul II, supported Maciel. After John Paul's death, Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, barred Maciel from saying Mass publicly or giving speeches or interviews. The Vatican never publicly addressed the charges or apologized to the victims.
Maciel died last year at the age of 87.
Juan Vaca of Holbrook, N.Y., one of Maciel's nine accusers, said Wednesday that he wasn't surprised by the report that Maciel had fathered a child. Though Maciel's nine accusers were all male, Vaca said that while a member of the order in Mexico in the late 1950s, he knew Maciel to have close relationships with women, sometimes spending hours at a time with them behind closed doors.
"I know his narcissistic personality," said Vaca, who is married and teaches psychology at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
The allegation that Marciel had fathered a child was reported Tuesday by Berry on the National Catholic Reporter's website after an unidentified priest with the order in Rome confirmed that Maciel had fathered a child.
Berry said the revelation threatens the myth of Maciel as a spiritual warrior — what he called the engine of the religious order's fund-raising machine. Founded by Maciel in 1941, the order has about 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians in more than 20 countries.
"This is a very cult-like organization; they have sold to their followers the myth that their founder was a saint," Berry said. Even after the Vatican's decision in 2006, he said, the church never apologized or admitted to any abuse.
Tom Hoopes, executive editor of the National Catholic Register, which is affiliated with the order, posted an apology to Maciel's sexual assault victims as a comment on the blog of a Catholic author, www.AmyWelborn.wordpress.com on Tuesday. Hoopes said he felt compelled to write because he defended Maciel earlier.
In the posting he wrote: "I'm sorry, to the victims, who were victims twice, the second time by calumny. I'm sorry, to the Church, which has been damaged. I'm sorry, to those I've misled."
The posting concluded: "The Church did bring justice, and did penalize this man. Thank God for the Church. I seek repentance and forgiveness, and I leave it at that."
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