RHODE ISLAND
Boston.com
By MICHELLE R. SMITH / Associated Press / July 18, 2013
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Lawyers contesting the will of a widow who gave some $60 million to a secretive and disgraced Roman Catholic religious order are trying again to have their case heard, filing court papers in an attempt allow the woman’s niece to sue.
The papers, filed Wednesday with the Rhode Island Supreme Court, argue that Mary Lou Dauray has the right to intervene in the estate of her late aunt, Gabrielle Mee, a devout Catholic who gave most of her money to the conservative religious order the Legion of Christ. Mee died in 2008.
The lawyers seek to overturn a ruling by Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein, who threw out Dauray’s lawsuit last year, saying she had no standing to sue. But he said at the same time that evidence existed that Mee was unduly persuaded to give the Legion her money and detailed how the Legion slowly took control of her finances as she became more deeply involved in the movement.
A church investigation determined that the Legion’s founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, sexually molested seminarians and fathered three children. The Vatican took over the order in 2010 and Pope Benedict XVI ordered a wholesale reform.
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