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  Vatican Probe Involves Area Religious Order

Associated Press, carried in New Haven Register [Hartford CT]
January 10, 2005

HARTFORD — The Vatican has reopened an investigation into charges that a powerful Mexican priest close to the pope sexually abused seminarians.

The allegations focus on the actions of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, now 84 and based in Rome.

He leads a religious order known as the Legionaries of Christ, which claims 600 priests in 18 countries. Its U.S. headquarters is in Orange, and it has a seminary in Cheshire.

The allegations surfaced in February 1997. Nine former members of the legion said Maciel first abused them years ago when they were young boys or teenagers, ages 10 to 16, in seminaries in Spain and Italy.

In 1997, the Rev. Felix Alarcon, one of the accusers, said, "Nothing ever came of it (the accusation). It’s amazing … there are big people in Rome who are avoiding this." Alarcon had opened the legion’s first U.S. base in Connecticut.

Maciel and the legionaries of Christ have vigorously denied the allegations of abuse. Maciel has accused the nine men of a conspiracy to defame him.

A spokesman for the religious order said Friday that the Legionaries of Christ had not been informed about the investigation being reopened. Jay Dunlap said the Vatican investigated Maciel in the late 1950s and cleared him of any wrongdoing.

"The Vatican investigated, moved in, questioned the legionaries individually and in depth, and found absolutely no wrongdoing of any kind," Dunlap said.

The accusers, all professional men — two Mexican-Americans, five Mexicans and two Spaniards, one now deceased — have tried for years to call their accusations to the attention of Pope John Paul II.

The pope in November praised Maciel in a letter on the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination, citing his "intense, generous and fruitful priestly ministry."

A week later, Maciel’s accusers were told the Vatican was reopening a canon law investigation that stalled in 1999.

The canon law case had been lodged formally by the former Legionaries against Maciel in November 1998. A high-level Vatican agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, accepted the complaint as credible for further investigation. But it never proceeded and no investigation was made.

In a letter dated Dec. 2, Martha Wegan, a Vatican-approved canon lawyer who is an advocate for the men’s case, informed them that a new "permanent promoter of justice" for the congregation has been appointed and wanted to know if they wanted to proceed.

"It seems to me that now the case is being taken seriously," she wrote.

"They say now they are taking it seriously? Before it wasn’t serious?" scoffed Juan Vaca, a former priest who headed the legion’s U.S. operations in Connecticut from 1971 to 1976. He now teaches psychology at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

Vaca said there was no question the men wanted the case to go forward. He said Jose de J. Barba Martin, spokesman for the men accusing Maciel, informed Wegan they wanted to proceed.

Vaca raised accusations against Maciel in letters to Pope John Paul II in 1978 and 1989 but never got a response. He named 20 others who he said had been abused by Maciel, his superior.

 
 

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