UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: The gift of reconciliation arising from the witness of new ministers of the Divine Mercy.
by FATHER RAYMOND J. DESOUZA 01/16/2016
It was an act of reconciliation — a most suitable way to begin the Jubilee of Mercy. That’s not how we usually describe ordinations, but in this case, it was. Permit a personal explanation.
On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Dec. 12, 2015, the Legionaries of Christ ordained 44 men to the priesthood in Rome. I had been invited to attend, as one of the deacons to be ordained, Sameer Advani, is a graduate of Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, and had been active in our chaplaincy, Newman House, during his undergraduate years on campus (1999-2003).
I accepted the invitation to go out of pride in Sameer and in gratitude for God’s goodness to Newman House in raising up a priestly vocation from our men. Yet there was a touch of ambiguity in my feelings, related in part to my work at the Register.
While Sameer was frequenting Newman House in the early 2000s, I was in Rome as a seminarian myself and serving as the Register’s Rome correspondent. The Register was then owned by the Legionaries, and so my relationship with the order grew during those years, and it was a happy one.
But a lot happened after 2003, when Sameer entered the Legionaries and I returned home to take up my duties as Newman House chaplain. In 2006 came the Vatican’s decision to impose upon the founder, Father Marcial Maciel, the penalties reserved for elderly clerics guilty of sexual abuse: namely, confinement to a reserved life of prayer and penance, without any public ministry.
In 2009, the extent of Father Maciel’s duplicity and depravity became known.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.