By Bruce Nolan
Times Picayune
April 14, 2010
http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2010/04/order_of_catholic_priests_bought_favor_with_vatican_new_orleans_writer_alleges.html
Jason Berry, the New Orleans writer, reported this week that the founder of the Legion of Christ, a global order of Catholic priests, for years deployed lavish gifts and envelopes of cash to powerful Vatican cardinals and other officials to win support for his work before his eventual exposure as a predator.
Berry said the gifts help explain why the Rev. Marcial Maciel Delgollado and his fast-growing order enjoyed powerful allies at the Vatican, even after nine men filed formal charges in the late 1990s that he had sexually abused them as young seminarians.
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| New Orleans writer Jason Berry\'s latest revelations about scandal in the Catholic Church revolve around hush money paid by an abusive priest to Vatican officials. |
The two-part report on Maciel's gifts, published last week and Monday in the National Catholic Reporter, comes after the Legion's admission last year that the charismatic Maciel led a secret life, fathered a daughter in his native Mexico and supported her and her mother with donations diverted from the Legion.
The order has also acknowledged that Maciel molested the seminarians. And it has not disputed the claims of two men in Mexico who said they are his sons by a second woman, also supported by donations to the Legion.
Berry and a Connecticut newspaperman, Gerald Renner, were the first to report in 1997 that Maciel, then at the height of his fame, years earlier had molested the seminarians — and that the men could make no headway at the Vatican even after filing a formal canonical charge against Maciel.
For years Maciel denied the seminarians' allegations. The Legion and its supporters praised Maciel as a figure of unique personal holiness and denounced Berry and Renner as scandal-mongers.
Berry and Renner expanded their reporting into a book, "Vows of Silence," in 2004. After Renner's death, Berry continued the reporting and converted it to a television documentary in 2008.
Maciel died in 2008. The Legion's acknowledgment early last year that it had verified he had an adult daughter supported with Legion funds stunned the worldwide organization as well as an affiliated lay group called Regnum Christi.
After the admissions, the Vatican appointed five bishops to recommend whether the Legion and Regnum Christi should be disbanded or rebuilt. The Legion, with 7,000 priests, operates in 23 countries and runs several schools and seminaries. Regnum Christi, the civilian wing that encourages Catholic families in piety, numbers about 60,000, with an estimated 200 families around New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
The bishops' report may come in a matter of weeks.
Berry said in an interview that years of continued reporting on the Legion, including eight trips to Mexico and three trips to Rome, has built a web of contacts inside and outside the Legion and a trove of documents opening a window into the ornate world of internal church processes.
Citing documents, e-mail messages and interviews with four unnamed current or former Legion priests, the National Catholic Reporter reports that Maciel, a master fundraiser, had for years lavished gifts of money and, in one case, an apartment renovation on key Vatican cardinals who might advance or harm his organizations.
The newspaper said the gifts included tens of thousands of dollars in cash. The newspaper said church regulations permit accepting personal gifts under some circumstances. But it said that because the cardinals did not respond, it could not determine whether the cardinals and other recipients had disclosed the gifts internally.
The newspaper reported that Maciel once tried to offer a gift to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. He spurned it.
The seminarians' complaints against Maciel languished for almost eight years, until Ratzinger ordered a thorough investigation in 2004 in the face of internal Vatican resistance. Two years later, as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger banned the aging Maciel from all public ministry, ending his career two years before his death at 87.
Berry said the most recent reporting was financed by the Nation Institute, a liberal foundation that supports independent reporting.
The National Catholic Reporter, a Catholic newspaper independent of church governance, has been a platform for Berry's reporting for years, going back to his early reports in the 1980s on the first signs of what would become the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the United States.
Contact: bnolan@timespicayune.com
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