MEXICO
Washington Post
Pope Mexico trip clouded by documents that show Vatican knew of Legion founder’s abuse
By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, March 21
MEXICO CITY — Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Mexico this week to a very public reminder of one of the Catholic Church’s most egregious sex abuse scandals: A new book says internal Vatican documents show the Holy See knew decades ago of allegations that the Mexican founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order was a drug addict and pedophile.
The documentation has been compiled in a book “La voluntad de no saber” (”The will to not know”), which is co-authored by Jose Barba, a former Legion priest who along with other priests in 1998 brought a church trial against the Legion’s founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, for having sexually abused them while they were seminarians.
While details of the abuse were made public years ago in Mexico and the Spanish-speaking world, the authors aim for a larger international audience, saying they will post key documents on the Internet as part of the book release Saturday. Excerpts of the book published by Proceso magazine on Sunday received little attention in Mexico.
“The importance of this book is that it documents the irrefutable evidence and proof that the Vatican has been lying about Maciel,” said Bernardo Barranco, an expert from the Religious Studies Center of Mexico and author of the prologue of the new text.
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