ROME
National Catholic Reporter
Francis X. Rocca Catholic News Service | Feb. 6, 2014
ROME Representatives of the Legionaries of Christ, meeting to reform their troubled congregation nearly four years after it was effectively taken over by the Vatican, announced a new slate of leaders Thursday and formally apologized to victims of their disgraced founder.
The statement by the congregation’s extraordinary general chapter, released Thursday, expressed “deep sorrow” for the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado’s “reprehensible and objectively immoral behavior,” including “abuse of minor seminarians,” “immoral acts with adult men and women,” “arbitrary use of his authority and of material goods,” “indiscriminate consumption of addictive medicines” and plagiarism.
Saying they were “grieved” it had taken so long to apologize to Maciel’s “many victims,” the members of the chapter acknowledged a “long institutional silence” in response to accusations against him and offered a progress report in efforts to overcome the founder’s demoralizing legacy.
The gathering of 61 Legionary priests from 11 countries, which opened Jan. 8 and is expected to last until the end of February, is the culmination of a reform process that began with a Vatican-ordered apostolic visitation in 2009. That investigation was prompted by revelations Maciel, who died in 2008, had fathered at least one illegitimate child and sexually abused minors.
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