ROME (ITALY)
National Catholic Register
January 2, 2019
By Edward Pentin
Cardinal João Bráz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, has disclosed that the Vatican had documents on the abusive conduct of the disgraced founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, from as long ago as 1943.
The Brazilian cardinal told the Spanish Catholic online magazine Vida Nueva that “those who covered it up were a mafia, they were not the Church.”
Cardinal Bráz de Aviz did not give any more details about the documents in the interview, given while he was in Madrid for a conference late last year, but said his congregation currently has “nothing to do” with such a coverup and now follows “a very good process.”
According to a 2006 article in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Rome investigated Father Maciel for suspected pedophilia between 1956 and 1959 on the instructions of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani — 13 years after the first reports referred to by Cardinal Braz de Aviz.
During those four years, Maciel was suspended as superior general of the Legion and expelled from Rome, but the investigation yielded no results and he soon returned to his old ways but with more power.
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