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	Mexican Cleric LED Double Life, Vatican Inquiry Finds By Philip Pullella National Post March 27, 2010 http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/holy-post/archive/2010/03/27/mexican-cleric-led-double-life-vatican-inquiry-finds.aspx VATICAN CITY -- An influential Roman Catholic priestly order — whose Mexican founder was discovered to have been a sexual molester and to have fathered at least one child — apologized yesterday to the priest's victims, whose accusations were ignored. Last week, the Vatican announced the completion of a one-year inquiry of the conservative order, which involved visits by papal inspectors to its more than 120 seminaries, 200 schools and 600 centres for lay Catholics around the world. Father Marcial Maciel, who died in 2008 at age 87, was a cult figure in the order and for years had the ear of pope John Paul II despite allegations he had abused young male seminarians. The order, Legionaries of Christ, later found he had lived a double life for decades. The revelations dealt a severe moral blow to the priestly order and its lay branch, Regnum Christi, which has tens of thousands of members. In a statement believed to be unprecedented in the history of a Catholic religious order, the Legion disowned its founder: "We accept that, given the gravity of his faults, we cannot take his person as a model of Christian or priestly life." While heading an order of priests who take vows of celibacy, Maciel had a mistress with whom he had at least one child in Mexico, and perhaps had two other children by another woman. Former seminarians accused Maciel of sexually abusing them when they were teenagers, but the order denied the allegations for years. "We ask all those who accused him in the past to forgive us, those whom we did not believe or were incapable of giving a hearing to, since at the time we could not imagine that such behaviour took place," the order said in a statement. Founded by Maciel in 1941, the order now has about 850 priests and 2,500 seminarians in 21 countries. It also runs a pontifical university in Rome. In 2006, after new evidence, Pope Benedict ordered Maciel to retire to a life of "prayer and penitence."
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