MYSTICAL PEDOPHILE: Fr. Marcial Maciel, Founder of the Legion of Christ, morphed into Regnum Christi Federation
April 1st, 2024
My wife keeps telling me to forget about Fr. Maciel and the Legionaries of Christ. But I can’t . When you are a former Legionary and have lived with Fr. Maciel certain images and experiences stick in your mind. Not that I lived with him. But he was alive all the time I was a member of the Legionaries of Christ, 1961-1984; Maciel’s age was 41-64; so he was fully functioning -if that’s what we want to call it- all those twenty-three years.
I was never one of his favorites or part of his inner circles. They keep asking me what I knew about his pedophilic abuse of his seminarians. The answer is simple: nothing. That circle of sexual abuse was hermetically sealed by the predator; the victims were sworn never to talk about it among themselves. They never discussed it until after they left the Legion -and were free from his mental control.
I only learned about such things later -after I had left the Legion! José Barba phoned me one day out of the blue when I was at the rectory of St. Matthew’s cathedral in Washington DC, circa 1987; ten years before Berry and Renner let the cat out of the bag in the Hartford Courant, February 1997.
I now wonder whether we former Legionaries suffer from secondary PTSD when we look back on our then innocent experiences and realize what was going on behind the scenes:
We recall being privileged to participate in the Holy Mass celebrated by our holy founder in the order’s private chapels in Salamanca and Rome. We, the true Holy Innocents, watched Fr. Maciel’s measured movements as the master of ceremonies led him through the various stages of the ritual -with which he was not overly familiar!. And how Fr. Maciel would show so much devotion at the consecration of the host. How he would hold it up in his pale hands above his head for all to adore, remaining a minute or more in that posture as he stared at the Host in mystical rapture.
We didn’t know that with those same hands, in the sacristy before Mass, he may have fondled an altar boy, one of his seminarian “sons”, to the point of orgasm.
Dear Editor,
thank you for bringing these unpleasant but true realities to our attention! Helping others not to be deceived by Father Maciel and his leavan, the Legion of Christ/Regnum Christi Federation