ROME
National Catholic Register
by EDWARD PENTIN
07/18/2014
Legionary Father Eduardo Robles Gil, a native of Mexico, was elected general director of the Legion of Christ in February this year. At that time, the religious congregation, founded in 1941, had just concluded its first Extraordinary General Chapter meeting to draft and revise its constitutions, bringing to a close the Vatican-supervised reform and returning the Legion to self-governance. .
In this wide-ranging interview with the Register in early July, he discusses the health of the religious congregation after its general chapter and the implementation of a program of reform.
The Legion and its lay movement, Regnum Christi, were thrown into turmoil in the late 2000s, after revelations came to light of grave misconduct by the congregation’s founder, Father Marcial Maciel (1920-2008), which the Legionary leadership acknowledged, denounced and apologized for in 2010.
Earlier this month, the Vatican appointed Jesuit Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda as pontifical adviser to advance the renewal and reform of the religious congregation.
In this July 4 interview, Father Robles Gil also explains the congregation’s precise charism, provides details on the new pontifical assistant’s role as a consulter and shares the methodology behind the congregation’s recruitment techniques. He also sheds light on the revised constitutions.
What are your overall hopes and plans for the Legion of Christ?
Right now, our plans are to make the corrections requested to obtain the approval of our constitutions. We need to write our secondary rules and other regulations and updated formation plans. That’s one of our main jobs right now. Then we have to work on the unity and cooperation in the mission with all the other realities in Regnum Christi.
We have consecrated lay women, consecrated lay men and lay members, both married and single, as well as some diocesan priests. We have to figure out a canonical structure, so that, also juridically, we can reflect the communion we strive to live every day. So that’s one of our main tasks for this year. We are still working on that. I also want to visit all the Legionaries in the places where they serve. I have started visiting some places.
In the next months, I will be traveling a lot, so I can understand the reality of the Regnum Christi movement and of the Legion of Christ in each place. That’s very important for good government.
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