MEXICO
National Catholic Reporter
Jason Berry | Feb. 8, 2016
ANALYSIS On Feb. 12, Pope Francis flies to Mexico, a vast land scarred by barbaric drug cartels and deep poverty that are pushing migrants to America — all front-burner issues for a papacy advocating mercy and justice.
Amid this, a new book, El Imperior Financierio de Los Legionarios de Cristo was published in December by Grijal-bo in Mexico City. There is no English translation as yet. Written by Raúl Olmos, an investigative journalist in Mexico, the book focuses on the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order founded by the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, a notorious pedophile dismissed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 to “a life of prayer and penitence.” The home base of the order is Mexico City, in the world’s second-largest Catholic country (after Brazil).
The investigation into the order began in 2004, ordered by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, as an ailing Pope John Paul II praised Maciel and gave the Legionaries control of the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem.
The Legion operates a network of elite private schools and a major university in Mexico, with another university and house of studies in Rome. Among their many super-wealthy backers in Mexico is Carlos Slim, a telecommunications magnate and one of the world’s wealthiest men. He is the largest single investor in The New York Times, with a $100 million stock investment,according to Forbes.
In 2009, a year after Maciel’s death, the Legion disclosed that he had a daughter by a woman he never married; he supported both women in Madrid. In 2010, two men and a woman came forth, declaring themselves mother and sons of a second shadow-family in Mexico, which the Legion did not dispute. …
Fr. Pablo Perez, who left in 2012, after 39 years, tells Olmos: “They do not care about education or children — it’s the money. Legionaries do not waste their time with the poor or middle class. They choose their vocations among little white boys. We rent priests for your beautiful and expensive events, weddings, funerals, first communions.
“The son of Carlos Salinas de Gortari” — the former Mexican president, a figure disgraced by scandal, his brother in prison for corruption — “got married in April 2013. For his wedding, it was not a bishop or a cardinal, but a Legionary priest.”
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