Ri Supreme Court Rules Legion of Christ Can Keep $30 Million Bequest

By Patrick Anderson
Providence Journal
February 6, 2015

http://www.providencejournal.com/news/courts/20150206-ri-supreme-court-rules-legion-of-christ-can-keep-30-million-bequest.ece

Snow covers the grounds of the Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, R.I., Friday Feb. 15, 2013. The facility previously was home to Gabrielle Mee, who bequeath $60 million to the Legion of Christ, a secretive and now-disgraced Roman Catholic order. (AP Photo/Rodrique Ngowi)

The Rhode Island Supreme Court Friday denied a woman’s latest bid to block the disgraced Legion of Christ from receiving $30 million from her late aunt’s estate.

Upholding a 2012 Superior Court decision, the justices ruled that Mary Lou Dauray, the niece of Gabrielle D. Mee of North Smithfield, did not have standing to challenge the will.

Dauray had argued that the Legion, a religious order whose founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, was discovered to have molested young seminarians, used fraud and coercion to convince her aunt to bequeath her family’s entire fortune.

In a ruling for the court, Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg wrote that because Dauray did not stand to benefit if her aunt’s will was invalidated, she did not have standing to sue.

According to Dauray’s attorney, the Legion of Christ has already received roughly $30 million from the Mee estate and stands to receive another $30 million over the next three decades.

A second Rhode Island lawsuit that accused the Legion of Christ of improperly influencing a well-off elderly person’s donations was recently settled out of court, according to court documents.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux approved a motion dismissing Paul Chu’s suit against the Legion of Christ.

Contact: panderson@providencejournal.com