Zenit's Escape from the Legion of Christ, Vatican Insider, October 12, 2011

Zenit's Escape from the Legion of Christ

Vatican Insider
October 12, 2011

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Newspaper editing

There's no peace for Zenit news agency. Since its editor-in-chief, Jesús Colina, left, Zenit's six foreign language news editors have also followed suit, resigning from the Legion of Christ's Catholic newspaper, to show their disagreement with the publisher.

As Zenit's six foreign language news editors (Karna Swanson, English; Gisele Plantec, French; Inma Alvarez, Spanish; Mirko Testa, Italian; Alexandre Ribeiro, Portuguese; Tony Assaf, Arabic; the German position is vacant), we announce with deep regret our decision to leave the agency after many years of service to the Church and to all the agency's readers," a press release read. "After years of fruitful collaboration with the Legionaries of Christ, we disagree with the decision of the congregation to underline the institutional dependence of the agency on the Legion. The initial vision of Zenit was never to make it a service of a particular congregation, but rather of the universal Church. This has been the spirit with which we have worked throughout the years, and we could not betray this spirit now. We warmly thank all our readers for their loyalty and support throughout the years, and we hope to be able to continue to work for the Church and for all those who seek the truth, in another manner, but always with the same spirit."

Last week, Zenit's founder, Jesús Colina left his position as editor-in-chief, citing two reasons for this: the disagreement on "administrative transparency" with the Legion of Christ and the affair involving the founder of the Legion of Christ, the late Mexican priest, Marcial Maciel - who the Vatican established to be a paedophile, a drug addict and had fathered a number of children with various women, after putting the religious congregation under the administration of an external commissioner. "Father Marcial Maciel's conduct and the way in which the congregation informed us of this, Colina had written in a note, concealing important facts, has often led to us not carrying out our duty of providing information that is in line with the Pope and the Holy See's vision,fully."