UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
By John L. Allen Jr. | GLOBE STAFF FEBRUARY 15, 2014
It’s a measure of how bad things have become for the scandal-plagued Legionaries of Christ that the first question a journalist feels obliged to ask the religious order’s new leader is, “Have you ever sexually abused anyone?”
For the record, the answer of Father Eduardo Robles Gil Orvañanos was, “I can promise, swear, whatever you want, that I haven’t. . . it would make no sense at all for us to put someone in a leadership position with something to hide.”
Robles spoke in a Feb. 14 interview with the Globe, his first with an English-language news outlet.
The Legionaries not so long ago were a Catholic powerhouse, a body of gung-ho priests enjoying the support of Pope John Paul II and other Vatican heavyweights and wielding vast political and financial muscle. The order fell from grace after revelations that its founder had lived a shocking double life, including having relationships with two women and fathering up to six children, as well as sexual abuse of young seminarians and, reportedly, even two of his own children.
The founder, Mexican Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, died in 2008. The bombshell about his misconduct, along with scandals involving other prominent Legionaries, makes the order the most polarizing symbol of the broader sexual abuse crisis in Catholicism. A recent Associated Press report described the Legionaries as “one of the most egregious examples of how . . . church leaders put the interests of the institution above those of the victims.”
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