ROME
Catholic News Service
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) — Members of Regnum Christi, the lay movement associated with the Legionaries of Christ, said they don’t feel they are on a salvage mission, but rather are part of a transformation.
They have been shocked and disillusioned by revelations that their movement’s founder — the late Father Marcial Maciel Degollado — fathered children and sexually abused seminarians, and they recognize that many more have been hurt by Father Maciel’s actions. Yet they are frustrated by widespread doubts about the validity of the movement, which they still strongly believe can improve their own lives and the life of the church.
Brenner LeCompte, 28, entered the Legionaries’ “apostolic school,” a kind of minor seminary, when he was 15, and spent eight years with the Legionaries before deciding he was not called to the priesthood. LeCompte, who lives in Connecticut, told Catholic News Service he has checked out other movements, but “I haven’t connected with anything else.”
Now married with a new baby, he said he believes his involvement with Regnum Christi “is a vocation. I don’t feel at home anywhere else.”
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