Legion of Christ Changes Leadership and Apologises for the Past

By Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican Insider
February 7, 2014

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/news/detail/articolo/legionari-legionarios-legionaries-31872/

FR. EDUARDO ROBLES GIL

It’s white smoke for the Legion. Fr. Eduardo Robles Gil was has been elected general director of the Legion of Christ, the religious order which the Holy See placed under the administration of an external commissioner following the sex abuse scandals involving its founder Marcial Maciel Degollado.

The Legion held an Extraordinary General Chapter in Rome, chaired by pontifical representative Velasio De Paolis, electing Gil and all other members of the Legion’s central government.

The official communique states that “since the Chapter is the highest internal authority that represents the whole Congregation, it seems necessary for us to take a stance regarding the significant events that have occurred in the past nine years.” “With this, we want to define conclusively the posture of our Congregation with respect to the behavior of Fr. Marcial Maciel and his role as founder, in continuity with the decisions of the Holy See and the previous declaration of all the major superiors of the Legion of Christ.”

“When we ponder the magnitude of the evil and scandal caused, we realize that we are under the merciful gaze of God who, with his providence, continues to guide our steps. United with Jesus Christ, we hope to be able to redeem our painful history and overcome with good the consequences of evil. Only in this way can we consider what has taken place in light of the Gospel and build our future on the solid foundations of trust in God, of fidelity to the Church, and of the truth.”

“From this point of view, we have considered the reprehensible and objectively immoral behavior of Fr. Maciel, which merited the sanctions that, at the time, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith justly imposed on him.” “Our founder died in 2008. We ask God to have mercy on him,” the Legion adds.

“We want to express our deep sorrow for the abuse of minor seminarians, the immoral acts with men and women who were adults, the arbitrary use of his authority and of material goods, the indiscriminate consumption of addictive medicines and the act of presenting writings published by third parties as his own.” “We find the incongruity of presenting oneself as a priest and a witness of the faith continuously for decades while hiding this immoral behavior to be incomprehensible. We firmly condemn this.”

“We are grieved that many victims and other affected persons have waited so long in vain for an apology and an act of reconciliation on the part of Fr. Maciel. Today, we would like to issue that apology as we express our solidarity with these persons.” Furthermore, “we have heard reports about how the major superiors of the Congregation discovered these hidden aspects of the life of our founder, how they sought to discern the appropriate response in light of ethical and moral demands, and how they carried out the process of communication.”

“Together with them, today we acknowledge with sadness the initial incapability of believing the testimonies of the persons who had been victims of Fr. Maciel, the long institutional silence and, later on, the hesitations and errors of judgment when setting out to inform the members of the congregation and others. We apologize for these shortcomings, which have increased the suffering and confusion of many.”

“These events and situations could have done away with our religious Congregation had we not been accompanied by God’s mercy and the Church’s maternal care,” the Legionaries write in their communique. As part of its mea culpa, the Legion admitted an “inadequate understanding of the concept of founder and an excessive exaltation and uncritical way of considering his person.” “Many times we gave undue, universal value to Fr. Maciel’s directives,” they said. “For this reason, one of the primary tasks in the revision of the current constitutions has been to distinguish what really expresses the charismatic patrimony of our Congregation from other accidental elements.”

“We are ensuring the conformity of the whole of our governing documents with the universal norms of the Church.” “The three years of the revision process have been similar to a prolonged examination of conscience, carried out in community, in order to discover and purify those elements of our personal and institutional behavior that were not proper to religious life.” “We noticed some tendencies that have overshadowed the understanding of our charism, among others: insufficient collaboration with the local Church, excessive emphasis on the role of personal effort and merely human effectiveness, striving after prestige, and an indiscriminate fulfilling of minute norms.”

“All of this demands of us not only a change in legislative texts, but also a continual conversion of mind and heart.” “In these years, we have also arrived at a better understanding of our role within the Regnum Christi Movement. We are coming to value and respect the vocation and autonomy of the rest of the members, especially of the consecrated men and women. Together with them, we have begun a joint reflection on the role of each branch of the Movement, on our shared charism and on the way of carrying out our apostolate.”

“The numerous lay members of Regnum Christi are a very beautiful part of our ecclesial reality. We want to foster communion even more and support them by means of our priestly ministry.” On the practical side, “the first urgent aspect to address in this area is that of the reduction of the debt with banks that has resulted from various causes: the excessively rapid expansion of the institutions of the Congregation, the world economic crisis and the fall-off in donations. In some countries the debt is very high, but continues to be manageable considering the income and the assets of the Congregation as a whole.” “The administrative structure” needs to be adjusted so as “to foster the responsibility proper to the territorial and local superiors, to both the branches of consecrated members of Regnum Christi, and to the directors of the works of apostolate.”