New Oxford Review
November 8, 2010
http://www.newoxfordreview.org/note.jsp?did=1110-notes-power
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Those are the three concepts that best describe the modus operandi — and the goals — of the Legion of Christ. As time marches on, and the Vatican intervention proceeds apace, more and more of the scandal-plagued religious order’s secretive inner workings are coming into contact with the light of day — after decades of obfuscation, misdirection, and iron-fisted suppression of information on the part of founder Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado and his henchmen. Much work has been done by those members of the Catholic press willing to decipher the meaning behind the ongoing revelations of the serious sin and error that wracked the Legion and dogged its leaders. (For our contributions, see our New Oxford Notes “The Double Life of Marcial Maciel,” June 2010; “Can the Pope Save the Legion of Christ?” June 2009; and “The Self-Destruction of a Cult of Personality,” Apr. 2009.) Ultimately, we have the Holy See — and Pope Benedict XVI in particular — to thank for spearheading the painful and often maddening search for the real truth about the Legion of Christ and its leaders.
The investigation phase concluded this spring, and a formal report was made to Benedict by the five bishops who led it. As we reported in our June issue, the Vatican announced at the time that the Pope was set to appoint a special envoy to restructure the Legion, rewrite its statutes, and reform its culture — a culture defined by secrecy, servile obedience, and sexual, financial, and spiritual abuse.
This summer the Pope picked his man: He has selected as his delegate Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See. Not only does Archbishop De Paolis know his way around a balance sheet, he is a revered canon lawyer and an accomplished scholar who has taught not only canon law but civil law, as well as dogmatic and moral theology, at several pontifical universities. A member of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles — popularly known as the Scalabrinians — he has direct knowledge of and experience in a religious order. He has been described as one of the top experts on religious life from the canonical standpoint. Prior to his post as the Vatican’s chief auditor, he was secretary of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s equivalent of the Supreme Court, of which he will remain a member until his retirement. In other words, Archbishop De Paolis is no lightweight.
In his June 16 letter naming De Paolis his personal delegate, Pope Benedict reiterated the “importance of this mission,” the primary purpose of which is to “bring to completion the revision of the constitutions” of the Legion. The Pope also made special mention of the “weight of responsibilities” that will be placed on the archbishop’s shoulders as he undertakes the “task of governing this religious institute in my name for as long as it takes to carry out the path of renewal.”
In a decree describing the “modalities of fulfillment” of the delegate’s office, released the same day, Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, the Pope’s secretary of state, endowed Archbishop De Paolis with seemingly unlimited authority over all aspects of the order. De Paolis may overrule its constitutions, remove its superiors, reallocate its assets, oversee its ordinations, etc. In Cardinal Bertone’s words, Archbishop De Paolis “has the power to intervene wherever he sees fit, including in the internal government of the institute, on all levels.”
Clearly, the Pope understands the incredible, almost unfathomable, breadth and depth of the Legion’s problems — problems that are of a systemic nature — and has therefore given his delegate the latitude to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to right the ship.
Sandro Magister, a veteran Vatican correspondent for the Italian paper La Repubblica, observed that, “with a delegate endowed with such powers, there is no future for the ‘system’ that concentrated control of the Legion in the hands of the two main heirs of founder Marcial Maciel, Frs. Alvaro Corcuera and Luis Garza Medina, and with the latter even more than with the former” (Jul. 30). The end of this “system,” Magister continued, “also involves the end of that separate body, proprietary and managerial, under the total and exclusive control of Fr. Garza, which is Grupo Integer.”
Grupo Integer, according to Magister (Mar. 29), is “the holding company that acts as treasury and administrative center for all the works of the Legion in the world, with assets totaling an estimated 25 billion euros” (approx. $35 billion). Garza, the vicar general of the Legion, is Grupo Integer’s “creator and absolute master.”
Big money is no novelty in the order’s inner sanctum. As The New York Times reported (May 12), “The directors for the Legion’s charitable wing include executives of some of Mexico’s largest corporations, including the cement multinational Cemex; Copamex, a large paper producer; and Banco Compartamos, the country’s largest microfinance group. Benefactors include some of Mexico’s top tycoons, including…Dionisio Garza Medina, who recently stepped down as the chief executive of the industrial conglomerate Alfa; and Carlos Slim, the telecommunications magnate.” Slim is reputed to be the wealthiest man in the world.
The Legion’s connections to multinational megacorporations are certainly more widespread than this and will have to be unraveled by a trained hand. Papal delegate De Paolis’s experience as the Vatican’s chief auditor will be crucial as he tracks the massive amounts of money moving to and through the Legion, money that bought it power and influence in many quarters, including in the curia during John Paul II’s papacy.
A prime example of the power and influence the Legion wielded through its well-heeled and well-connected associates occurred in 1997, when a small Mexican TV station began investigating the accusations against Maciel. As The Times reported:
Javier Moreno Valle, who owned the channel then, said that the Legionaries…lobbied to keep the story off the air. “They started pressing through every channel they could,” he said. Roberto Servitje, part of the powerful family that controls Grupo Bimbo, a giant baked goods multinational, called for an advertising boycott of the station. He was seconded by Alfonso Romo, then a wealthy businessman from Monterrey with interests in cigarettes and insurance…. Father Maciel himself worked his political contacts to try to save his reputation…. Father Maciel also spoke to President Ernesto Zedillo’s private secretary, Liebano Saenz, who called Mr. Moreno Valle and asked him to cancel the program.
The order’s ham-handed approach to controlling the flow of information was felt throughout its organizational structure. The almost absurd level of control Legionary superiors wielded over their subjects’ daily lives came to light in a recent Associated Press (AP) report on conditions inside Regnum Christi. The Legion’s lay affiliate, Regnum Christi boasts some 700,000 members in more than thirty countries across the globe. Of those, some 900 are consecrated, and almost all are women. Although the consecrated remain in the lay state, they give their lives over to the order, profess vows before a Legionary priest — the traditional three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, plus the order’s notorious fourth vow never to speak ill of the Legion, its founder, or their superiors — and “voluntarily renounce the use of their capacity for decision-making.”
Eight formerly consecrated women disclosed to the AP (Sept. 26) the “emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse” they suffered at the hands of their superiors. “The life we lived was a religious life that was even stricter than a lot of the convents in the world,” said one woman, who requested anonymity because “she feared legal action” by the Legion. The consecrated lay women were allowed to receive phone calls from their parents once per month and visits only once or twice per year. Women who lived overseas were allowed to return home once every seven years. Their mail and e-mail correspondence was screened.
They were allowed to watch six movies per year (selected for content), and told not to read in the bathroom. They were instructed, for example, on the specific way to eat a piece of bread (tear off small pieces; never bite into it) and an orange (with a fork and knife). Those who violated the minutiae of the rules were often publicly humiliated. “I feel like I was brainwashed,” said another woman, who also spoke on condition of anonymity “for fear of retaliation from the Legion.”
Fr. Ladislas Orsy of Georgetown Law School, a respected canon lawyer, told the AP, “No one can give away a basic component of his humanity and renounce totally his ‘decision-making capacity’ — unless he wants to become a zombie. It opens the way for an ignorant or unwise superior to mislead and to harm — seriously, permanently — his subjects.”
The “cult-like conditions” that characterized the experience of these consecrated women “so alarmed Pope Benedict XVI,” reports the AP, that in May he ordered an additional investigation of Regnum Christi. In September the Pope appointed Spanish Archbishop Ricardo Blazquez as the apostolic visitator who will lead the investigation. Blazquez was one of the team of five episcopal visitators who investigated the Legion.
In our June 2009 issue we asked, “Can the Pope Save the Legion of Christ?” He appears to be doing everything possible to salvage the genuine vocations that such a twisted charism was somehow — miraculously, perhaps — able to foster. He has proven his resoluteness not to abandon those who, when they pledged their lives to Maciel and his Legion, thought they were pledging themselves to Christ and His Church.
One is left to wonder how the Legion will be able to attract new members now that its corrupt underbelly has been exposed. Perhaps it will indeed be necessary to “remake it from scratch,” as Sandro Magister suggests.
Archbishop De Paolis has his work cut out for him if he is to resurrect the Legion of Christ as a salutary religious institute that finds its sustenance in the saving truths of the Gospel of Christ rather than seeking to gain the world through the false promises of power, money, and mind control.
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