UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Judge gives green light to Legion inheritance lawsuit
Ex-Legionary: Curial overseer neglects investigation of inner culture
NCR Editorial Staff | Jan. 24, 2014
EDITORIAL
The Legion of Christ has been an agency of almost unimaginable fraud, and that reality alone should be reason for civil authorities to pursue a criminal investigation of its U.S. activities and for the church to proceed with extreme caution in considering allowing the group to continue.
The Legion, which was of many things but certainly not of Christ, was built on the life of a man, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who trafficked in deception, lies and crimes against children. The nature and extent of his fraud was only beginning to be acknowledged by way of Vatican investigation in the last years of his life.
As Jason Berry reports, the Legion has been the target of two Rhode Island lawsuits alleging the order defrauded elderly donors who died without knowing what those seeking their fortunes knew only too well — that the man they characterized as a saint had been accused multiple times of sexually abusing seminarians and ultimately was disciplined by the pope.
The first suit was dismissed on a technicality, but the judge did not pass up the opportunity to deliver a scathing judgment of the Legion and its tactics — and to release thousands of pages of testimony and evidence in that case, which had been restricted from the public by a protective order the Legion had requested.
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