RHODE ISLAND
National Catholic Reporter
by Jason Berry | Oct. 23, 2012
The Legion of Christ drew $2.19 million last year from a $28 million charitable trust that it controls, thanks to Gabrielle Mee, a wealthy widow who spent her final years as a consecrated woman in Regnum Christi, the order’s lay wing. An orthodox Catholic, she was unaware that Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legion, had out-of-wedlock children or that the Vatican had banished him from ministry.
The Timothy J. Mee Charitable Trust — established by the late husband of Gabrielle Mee, who died in 2008 — paid the scandal-battered Legion $2.19 million in contributions, gifts and grants last year, according to the trust’s 990 form, a public record that private foundations file with the IRS.
The Timothy Mee trust’s $28.27 million net value is slightly less than half of the $60 million at issue in a lawsuit filed by Gabrielle Mee’s niece against the Legion, Fr. Anthony Bannon and Bank of America, which manages the Timothy Mee trust with the Legion.
The niece, Mary Lou Dauray, sought to revoke the will and retrieve the assets, on grounds that her late aunt was deceived.
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