Spiritual defender: Legion of Christ opens critical meeting on future

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Legion of Christ opens critical meeting on future - Yahoo News

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RAYLOKEJanuary 9, 2014 at 1:39 AM
The Legion's hope is that following the monthlong meeting, Pope Francis will approve a new constitution that explains the order's mission, hierarchy and rules and will allow the Legion to move on without any more Vatican oversight. The Legion's top superiors and 42 priests elected as representatives — including many close to Maciel — will finalize the constitution during the meeting and then elect new leadership.

But several former Legion priests have urged the pontiff not to fall for the order's "supposed reform," saying the rehabilitation process ignored its core dysfunction: financial duplicity, lack of an authentic religious identity and continued cover-up of the people who facilitated the founder's crimes.

"In the Legion, nothing is as it seems," they wrote Francis last year.

Francis' predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, took over the Legion in 2010 after Vatican investigators determined that the congregation needed to be "purified" of the influence of Maciel, who sexually abused his seminarians, fathered three children and created a system of power in the Legion that allowed his crimes to go unchecked.

Former members said the code of silence and obedience that Maciel imposed created a toxic, cult-like environment where communications were screened, dissenters marginalized and members deceived and manipulated. Hundreds of priests, seminarians and lay consecrated members have abandoned the movement in recent years; there are now about 950 priests and a few hundred consecrated members who work in the Legion's schools, youth camps and some parishes.
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