Tag: Cardinal Sodano

Follieri, Sodano, and the Legion of Christ

From http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/24/follieri.arrested.ap/
updated 10:23 p.m. EDT, Tue June 24, 2008

Hathaway's ex arrested on fraud charges

Prosecutors: Raffaello Follieri posed as Vatican representative to fleece investors

They allege that Follieri, 29, spent investor's money on lavish things

FBI: Follieri said Vatican had formally appointed him to manage its financial affairs

Follieri recently dated actress Anne Hathaway

NEW YORK (AP) -- An Italian businessman who once dated actress Anne Hathaway was arrested Tuesday on charges he posed as a representative of the Vatican to fleece wealthy investors in a real estate company that sought to buy and redevelop Roman Catholic Church property.

Raffaello Follieri is accused of fleecing wealthy investors and spending their money improperly.

Bail was set at $21 million for Raffaello Follieri. Federal prosecutors said they have overwhelming evidence that he improperly spent up to $6 million from investors, much of it on a lavish lifestyle, including privately chartered jet travel with his girlfriend and others, expensive meals and clothing and a posh Manhattan apartment.

The girlfriend was not identified but it has been widely reported that Hathaway, the star of films including Get Smart, The Devil Wears Prada and The Princess Diaries, had until recently dated Follieri, 29.

An angry Follieri repeatedly interrupted his lawyer at a court appearance to tell her what to say. He shook his head at times and, as a prosecutor accused him of owing various debts, called out: We paid that.

After his court appearance, Follieri, who had been fighting a sinus infection, had some sort of attack and was taken to a hospital, said his publicist, Melanie Bonvicino. She said she did not have further information on his condition.

Prosecutor Reed Michael Brodsky said Follieri, of Foggia, Italy, boasted of tight Vatican connections to entice investors to give millions of dollars so he could live the lifestyle of a multimillionaire. He said Follieri had duped one investor as recently as last month.

In short, your honor, he is a con man, and he was able to defraud a lot of people out of a lot of money over a long period of time,

Brodsky told Magistrate Judge Henry B. Pitman. The evidence in this case is overwhelming because he left a trail of evidence.

Brodsky had asked Pitman to deny bail, saying Follieri had the money, the connections and the incentive to flee charges that could send him to prison for up to nine years if he is convicted. He said Follieri lost between $2.5 million and $6 million of investor money.

Pitman said Follieri must secure bail with $16 million in cash or property and must endure home detention, except for legal meetings, medical treatment or religious services.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan alleges that Follieri duped a partner into investing millions of dollars in a real estate scheme to buy properties at bargain prices from the Catholic church in the United States and redevelop them.

The partner, a private equity firm in California, was not identified in court papers. However, a division of supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. has settled lawsuits accusing Follieri of misappropriating more than $1 million to support a fancy lifestyle.

Follieri was charged with a dozen counts of wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering.

His lawyer, Flora Edwards, told The Associated Press, We're going to move forward and hope for a speedy resolution to this matter.

Outside court, she called the bail package one of the stiffest she had seen.

Edwards told the judge her client was no threat to flee just because he had access to millions of dollars and his family is in Italy. She noted that his mother was being treated at a hospital in Manhattan.

According to the FBI, Follieri claimed the Vatican had formally appointed him to manage its financial affairs and that he had met with the pope in person in Rome.

He is accused of keeping various ceremonial robes, including the robes of senior clergymen, in his Manhattan office, and of hiring two monsignors to accompany him during his business dealings.

Once, according to the complaint, he even asked a monsignor to change out of his robes and put on the robe of a more senior clergyman to create the false impression that Follieri had close ties to the Vatican.

The monsignors are not accused of any crimes. Messages for comment left for Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican's U.S. ambassador, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Prosecutors allege that Follieri's scheme unraveled when the principal investor sought an audit of the partnership and demanded an explanation for expenditures unrelated to administrative overhead or business expenses.

Earlier this month, the New York attorney general's office said it was investigating a foundation operated by Follieri that vaccinates children in Third World countries.

The Follieri Foundation has not filed U.S. tax disclosure forms required from charities, according to a review of records by the AP.

Hathaway's publicist, Stephen Huvane, has previously stressed that she is not part of any probes and is no longer a board member of the Follieri Foundation.

And from Catholic World News:
http://www.cwnews.com/offtherecord/offtherecord.cfm?task=singledisplay&recnum=4777

one born every minute

Posted by: Diogenes - Jul. 16, 2008 11:26 AM ET USA

Just before he was indicted, Raffaello Follieri-- who is either a real-estate entrepreneur or a con artist, depending upon your perspective-- arranged to buy a home from Bishop Joseph Galante of Camden, New Jersey. It was the bishop's own property, so he was free to dispose of it as he saw fit. There seems to be nothing improper about the transaction. Still you might wonder why the high-flying Follieri, who was enticing billionaire partners into his big development schemes, would bother purchasing an ordinary townhouse in New Jersey.

Maybe we can solve that mystery. Follieri was interested in doing business with American bishops. That's why he and a partner, Andrea Sodano (remember that name) set up hospitality suites in the hotels where the US bishops held their annual meetings. The big-money business plan for the Follieri Group was to buy up all the church properties that went on the market when parishes closed, develop those properties, and sell them at a profit. Obviously the scheme would work only if Follieri could buy the properties at attractive prices, and that's why he was courting the bishops' favor.

Most American chancery officials evidently recognized the Follieri scheme for what it was. Despite aggressive pursuit of deals in many different dioceses, the playboy financier was only able to purchase a few church properties before his partners began asking questions about where their money had gone, and learning that much of it had apparently gone to underwrite Follieri's jet-set lifestyle. That was the beginning of the end for the Follieri Group's adventure in American real estate.

Why did Follieri think he might get special treatment from American dioceses? That's where his partner, Andrea Sodano, comes into the story. Sodano is an engineer, whose role theoretically was to help guide the reconstruction efforts after properties had been purchased. You might wonder why an engineering consultant was chosen to help Follieri chat up the US bishops. But you'd probably stop wondering when you learned that Andrea Sodano's uncle, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, was at the time the Vatican Secretary of State.

Cardinal Sodano never commented on his nephew's business dealings, and other Vatican officials assured journalists that the Holy See had no special relationship with the Follieri Group. But that didn't stop Follieri from dropping hints about his ties to the Vatican-- and persuading some people, including the Clinton campaign.

And Bishop Galante, too, the New York Post reports:

Spokesman Andrew Walton said Galante initially met with Follieri at the encouragement of the Vatican and had no idea he was dealing with a con man until two months after he finalized the sale of his beach house.

Walton said the diocese got a phone call from an office of the Vatican through the bishop's office and we were asked to be open to dealing with the Follieri Group. We and other dioceses were encouraged to use Follieri where we could.

Interesting. Very interesting. If the bishop's spokesman is to be believed-- and we see no reason not to believe him-- then someone at the Vatican was placing phone calls in support of the Follieri scam. Wouldn't you like to know who it was?

Legion Leader Faces Sanctions; Report: Vatican To Restrict Ministry Of Maciel, Accused Of Sex Abuse

By Gerald Renner

 

May 19, 2006

 

Pope Benedict XVI has restricted the ministry of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Rome-based Legionaries of Christ, who has been accused for years of having sexually abused young seminarians in his charge, according to a report published Thursday.

The Vatican would not confirm the report but said it would issue a statement about its investigation into the charismatic, 86-year-old priest as early as today.

The restrictions were reported online by the National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper, following a week of rumors of some kind of action against Maciel.

John Allen, Vatican correspondent for the newspaper, reported that Vatican sources said the restrictions placed on Maciel amount to a finding that at least some of the accusations against him are well founded.

According to the story, which cited Vatican sources, Maciel is restricted from publicly acting as a priest. He is not defrocked – “laicized,” in church terms – but he cannot celebrate public Masses, give lectures or other public presentations, or give interviews for print or broadcast. The pope approved the restrictions shortly before Easter, the story said.

The first public allegations against Maciel surfaced in a Courant report in February 1997. Nine former members of the Legionaries said Maciel abused them in the 1950s and ’60s when they were young boys or teenagers, ages 10 to 16, in seminaries in Spain and Italy.

The Vatican did not respond directly to the allegations. Later that year Pope John Paul II appointed Maciel as his personal representative to a high-level meeting on the Americas, signaling his full support for the priest.

Maciel, a native of Mexico, founded the Legionaries of Christ religious order in 1941. The order says it now has 650 priests, and 2,500 seminarians in 20 countries. Its U.S. headquarters is in Orange, Conn., and it has a seminary in nearby Cheshire.

Maciel was repeatedly praised by John Paul and other high church leaders. Maciel and the Legionaries vociferously proclaimed his innocence. Maciel accused the nine men of a conspiracy to defame him.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Thursday that “Maciel is the most powerful Catholic official to ever face Vatican sanctions for child sexual abuse.”

“It would have been easy to let this case quietly go unresolved, as so many similar cases have,” Clohessy said. “We deeply appreciate that, at the highest levels of the church, action has been taken against such an extraordinarily high-ranking Catholic leader.”

The Rev. James Martin, associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, said the Legionaries had enormous support in the Vatican because of their loyalty to the church, their conservative views and their success in recruiting candidates for the priesthood.

“So to take action against their founder is absolutely stunning,” Martin said. “Benedict shows his independence by taking on a darling movement of the conservative right.”

Spokesmen for the Legionaries in Rome and in Orange said that they had no comment because they knew nothing of any Vatican action against Maciel.

Juan Vaca, a former priest who headed the Legionaries’ U.S. operations in Connecticut from 1971 to 1976, and who said he was abused by Maciel beginning when he was a 12-year-old boy, was cautious Thursday.

“My reaction is I am still in my state of expectation until I see the official document and the official statement from the Vatican. We have been waiting for so long,” said Vaca, who lives in Holbrook, N.Y., and teaches psychology at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

Vaca left the Legionaries in 1976 to join the Diocese of Rockville Centre in New York. He and another priest, the Rev. Felix Alarcon, sent letters to the pope accusing Maciel through official church channels in 1978 and 1989 but never got a response. Vaca left the priesthood. Alarcon, who established the Legionaries’ U.S. headquarters in Connecticut in 1965, is a retired priest in good standing in Madrid.

Vaca and Alarcon were among eight former Legionaries priests and seminarians who filed a canon lawsuit against Maciel in 1998 with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was assigned by Pope John Paul to handle sex-abuse charges against priests. The case lay dormant and no action was taken.

In January 2005, several months before he was elected to succeed John Paul, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger authorized the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he headed, to investigate the charges. Within days Maciel announced he was retiring because of his age and moved to his hometown of Cotija, Mexico.

A yearlong investigation was concluded at the end of 2005. It was conducted by a Maltese priest, Monsignor Charles J. Scicluna, a “permanent promoter of justice” for the congregation.

Scicluna traveled to the United States and Mexico, where he interviewed more than 30 people, several of whom claimed abuse but had not publicly come forward. Others were summoned to Rome.

Those Scicluna interviewed included former Legionaries priests and people associated with Regnum Christi, an auxiliary of mostly lay people who support the Legionaries. Two who spoke on condition of not being identified said in interviews with a reporter last fall that they knew nothing of sexual abuse but had complaints about what one called “psychological abuse.”

News reports of Scicluna’s investigation triggered confusion after the Legionaries of Christ in Rome sent out a press release last May saying that “the Holy See” informed the order that “there is no canonical process under way into our founder … nor will one be initiated.”

The Legionaries’ statement was confirmed to the press by the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, vice director of the Vatican Press Office. “There is no investigation now, and it is not foreseeable that there will be another investigation in the future,” Benedettini said.

He made no reference to Scicluna’s investigation or how that squared with his statement that there was no investigation.

It turned out that the denial of an investigation originated in the office of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state and a staunch supporter of Maciel. His office had nothing to do with investigating allegations of sexual abuse. Only the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith could speak to it, and its members are bound by an oath of secrecy.

Gerald Renner is a retired Courant religion writer. An Associated Press report is included in this story.

 

Vatican restricts ministry of Legionaries priest founder; Move seen as confirmation of sex abuse allegations against Maciel

Media Reports growing by the minute

 

Related Articles:
Catholic News Ageny
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=6764

Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/
local/connecticut/articles/2006/05/18/
vatican_to_comment_on_sex_abuse_case_against_legionaries_founder/

Ireland OnLine:
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/
story.asp?j=183141342&p=y83y4zx48

Much more to come

 

Posted Thursday May 18, 2006 at 9:12 a.m. CDT

Vatican restricts ministry of Legionaries priest founder
Move seen as confirmation of sex abuse allegations against Maciel

By John L. Allen Jr.
Rome

Capping a decade-long on-again, off-again investigation of accusations of sexual abuse, the Vatican has asked Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, to observe a series of restrictions on his ministry.

In effect, Vatican sources told NCR this week, the action amounts to a finding that at least some of the accusations against the charismatic 86-year-old Mexican priest are well-founded.

Maciel has not been laicized, but the restrictions issued shortly before Easter by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith limit Maciel’s public activity, such as his capacity to celebrate public Masses, to give lectures or other public presentations, and to give interviews for print or broadcast.

The restrictions have been approved by Pope Benedict XVI, and the Vatican is expected to issue a brief statement shortly.

Vatican sources stressed that the action against Maciel should not be read as an indictment of the Legionaries of Christ or its lay branch, Regnum Christi.

A spokesman for the Legionaries, asked to comment on the development, replied in an e-mail, “We have nothing to say. We don’t know anything about this.”

According to sources who spoke to NCR, the congregation’s investigation was closed sometime toward the end of 2005. In the early months of 2006, the cardinal members of the congregation in Rome were invited to review the documentation. The decision to impose restrictions was then reached sometime before Easter.

Sources described the documentation collected by the congregation as involving the testimony of at least 20 accusers. The acts in question, according to these sources, reached into the 1980s.

One cardinal who serves on the congregation told NCR that, in his view, the material left little doubt as to the validity of the charges, though he said he was less clear how Maciel understood what he had done. Under canon law, intent and state of mind are sometimes taken into consideration in meting out punishment.

Within the Vatican, the Maciel case has long been seen as particularly sensitive, in part because it could tarnish the reputation of the late John Paul II, who warmly praised and repeatedly honored Maciel. The case could also call into question the action of Benedict XVI, who as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stopped the case against Maciel in 1999. However, he reactivated the case in 2004 and ultimately approved the disciplining of Maciel.

A senior Vatican official told NCR that the decisive break came only in late 2004, when a number of additional accusers came forward. Prior to that, he said, both John Paul and then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, were operating on the assumption that the charges were not justified.

Maciel becomes perhaps the highest-profile priest in the Catholic church to be disciplined for allegations of sexual abuse.

He has a distinguished Catholic lineage. Two of Maciel’s great-uncles were Mexican bishops during the anti-clerical persecutions of the early 20th century. One, Bishop Rafael Guízar Valencia of Veracruz, was beatified by John Paul II in 1995, and a decree recognizing a miracle that clears his path to sainthood was signed by Benedict XVI April 28. Maciel’s uncle, Jesús Degollado Guízar, was the last commander-in-chief of the Cristeros army that took up arms in defense of the church.

Founded by Maciel in 1941, the Legionaries of Christ has become one of the most influential and rapidly growing communities in the church. Today the order numbers some 650 priests and 2,500 seminarians worldwide. The lay branch of the Legionaries, Regnum Christi, reportedly has 50,000 members worldwide.

The case against Maciel has followed a circuitous path.

Rumors of various sorts have long dogged the Legionaries’ founder. In 1956, he was deprived of his faculties to govern the Legionaries and sent into exile in Madrid while a canonical investigation was carried out. Charges at the time did not include sexual abuse but other matters such as excessive control over seminarians, theft and drug abuse. In 1959, the investigation cleared Maciel, and he was restored to his functions as superior general.

Read More
Read nine years of NCR coverage of Fr. Marcial Maciel and the Legionaries of Christ: Archive of NCR stories about Fr. Marcial Maciel.

Maciel later referred to this period of trial as “the Great Blessing.”

Complaints of sexual abuse first surfaced in the late 1990s, when nine former members of the Legionaries filed a canonical complaint against Maciel with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, alleging that they had been abused by Maciel as seminarians and young priests. Those acts, according to the accusers, dated to a period from 1943 to the early 1960s.

The Legionaries, and Maciel personally, strenuously denied the charges.

“Before God and with total clarity of conscience I can categorically state that the accusations brought against me are false,” Maciel wrote in April 2002.

One of the original accusers later recanted; another died.

The accusations became public through 1997 articles in The Hartford (Conn.) Courant by Jason Berry and Gerald Renner and in the National Catholic Reporter, based on the Courant story. The two reporters filed another major piece on the case for NCR in December 2001, noting that canon lawyers in Mexico and the Vatican had found the accusations to be credible but that then-Cardinal Ratzinger had halted the investigation of the charges in 1999.

According to Renner’s and Berry’s earlier reporting, the nine who originally brought accusations claimed that Maciel “first abused them when they were between the ages of 10 and 16, sometimes telling them he had permission from Pope Pius XII to engage in sexual acts with them in order to gain relief from pain related to an unspecified stomach ailment.”

After the case was reopened in 2004, the congregation’s promoter of justice, Maltese Msgr. Charles Scicluna, began to collect additional testimony. Sources told NCR that the eventual number of accusers who came forward against Maciel was “more than 20, but less than 100.”

On Jan. 20, 2005, Maciel declined reelection as the superior of the Legionaries of Christ and was succeeded by Fr. �lvaro Corchera Martinez del Rio. Around the time of the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, Scicluna traveled to Mexico to collect testimony from additional accusers. Later, Scicluna prepared a final dossier, which went before the cardinal members of the congregation and eventually Pope Benedict XVI.

Even for those convinced of Maciel’s guilt, the outcome of the case was long in doubt because of his strong track record of papal support.

Maciel accompanied John Paul II on visits to Mexico in 1979, 1990 and 1993. During the 1993 trip, it was John Paul’s public tribute to Maciel as an “efficacious guide to youth” that prompted the original nine accusers to come forward.

As late as 2002, when John Paul visited Mexico City, Maciel was in the front row at a papal Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and was greeted by the pope. In a 2004 letter, John Paul II congratulated Maciel for 60 years of “intense, generous and fruitful priestly ministry.” The pope said he wanted to join in the “canticle of praise and thanksgiving” for the great things he had accomplished.

In a book-length 2003 interview with journalist Jesús Colina of the Zenit news agency published as Christ is My Life, Maciel described dining with John Paul in the Apostolic Palace on several occasions. John Paul also appointed Maciel as a delegate to three synods of bishops, as well as to the 1992 meeting of the Latin American bishops in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. In 1994, John Paul made Maciel a consultor to the Congregation for Clergy.

Vatican observers suggest that at the time John Paul II regarded the charges against Maciel as malicious, ascribing them largely to hostility to Maciel’s doctrinal conservatism and his tenacious defense of the papacy.

The original accusers, however, earlier told NCR that they tried for many years to reach John Paul II with information about Maciel. Two of them said they sent letters in 1978 and again 1989, both by diplomatic pouch, but received no reply.

Other Vatican officials have also spoken positively of Maciel.

“Dear Father, I’ve seen the great work that you do,” Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, said to Maciel while embracing him during a November 2003 visit to Regina Apostolorum.

On May 20, 2005, the Secretariat of State under Sodano released a statement indicating there was no canonical case against Maciel, nor was one foreseen. It is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, however, that has responsibility for sex abuse cases, and the congregation continued its inquest.

Now-Cardinal Franc Rodé, a Slovenian and the Vatican’s top official for religious orders, celebrated a Mass marking the conclusion of the Legionaries’ General Chapter at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in January 2005, and used the occasion to praise Maciel.

Rodé called Maciel “the instrument chosen by God to carry out one of the great spiritual designs in the church of the 20th century.”

Speaking on background, Vatican officials explained these comments in much the same way as they did John Paul’s praise for Maciel. At the time, they argued, the evidence against Maciel was not yet complete, and looking at what these officials regarded as the positive works of the Legionaries and Regnum Christi, they assumed “by their fruits you shall know them.”

The Legionaries maintain a Web site defending Maciel, which can be found here: http://www.legionaryfacts.org/FATHERMACIEL.html.

[John L. Allen Jr. is NCR Rome correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@natcath.org.]

May 18, 2006, National Catholic Reporter

More links:
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2006/05/18/ap2757286.html

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/mershon/060518

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=183141342&p=y83y4zx48

http://www.cathnews.com/news/605/116.php

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/14611994.htm

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/191/story_19166_1.html

 

It’s Sunset Boulevard for the Cardinal Secretary of State

ROMA, March 2, 2006 For the Vatican curia, the upcoming consistory from March 23-25 will be very Lenten, and really hardly festive at all.

Only three of the curia heads waiting for the cardinal’s purple will receive it. Of those left standing at the gate, the most famous, archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, not only was not promoted as a cardinal, but was demoted as a nuncio in Egypt.

Step by step, with a few well-aimed decisions, Benedict XVI has already expunged two of the bastions in the curia that were opposed to him: the Congregation for the Liturgy, with the appointment as secretary of an archbishop of Sri Lanka in his trust, Albert M. Ranjith Patabendige Don, and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, with Fitzgerald’s dismissal as president.

And now everyone in the curia is waiting ‘or fearing’ for the next blow to fall against the secretariat of state, with the retirement on account of age of its senior office holder, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

* * *

Sodano, 78 years old, from Isola da Asti in Piedmont, seems to have no intention of leaving. On the contrary; in recent weeks he has sought instead to put out of commission another cardinal whom he has always considered his archrival, the pope’s vicar and the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, CEI, Camillo Ruini.

The trouble is that Ruini is incomparably more highly favored by Benedict XVI than Sodano is. And as a result the latter’s maneuver has turned back against himself. In the current secretary of state, Pope Joseph Ratzinger now sees more of an obstacle than a help.

There is a backdrop to Sodano’s maneuver: the audience Benedict XVI held with Ruini on January 2 of this year.

At that audience, Ruini handed over to the pope the letter of resignation that every bishop is required to write when he turns 75 years old, a resignation that the pope can choose to accept or not accept. Ruini turned 75 on February 19, and the following March 6 his third five-year term as president of the Italian bishops’ conference will also come to an end. But Benedict wants him to remain in office, both as vicar and as president. The pope sees that he is already too isolated, both in the curia and outside of it, to separate himself from a cardinal like Ruini, who agrees to an extraordinary extent with his vision and his program.

But nothing of this twofold confirmation was said publicly. The practice in regard to the office of vicar is for the office holder to remain at his post until the pope tells him he has accepted his resignation. As for the presidency of the CEI, there is time until March 6. And even here the decision belongs to the pope as the bishop of Rome and primate of Italy, unlike other nations in which the president of the conference is elected by the bishops.

In 1991, 1996, and 2001, John Paul II, each time before he made Ruini head of the CEI, asked for the advice of the presidents of the sixteen regions into which the Italian episcopacy is subdivided.

But this time ‘and this was at the end of January’ rather than the pope, the secretariat of state extended the consultation to all of the 226 bishops in office. To each one, the nuncio in Italy Paolo Romeo sent a letter under the seal of pontifical secrecy, asking the recipient to ‘indicate coram Domino’ and with gracious solicitude the prelate that you would like to suggest.

But there’s more in the letter. It begins by stating in no uncertain terms that ‘next March 6 the mandate of the Most Eminent Cardinal Camillo Ruini as president of the CEI will come to a conclusion’? And it continues by asserting that ‘the Holy Father thinks that a change in the office of the presidency is in order.’

The letter bears the date of January 26, and the only one to whom it was not sent was Ruini. But he was immediately made aware of it. And Benedict XVI was also informed, and discovered that it said the opposite of what he was planning to do.

On February 6, the nuncio who signed the letter, Romeo, was called by Benedict XVI for an audience. The pope asked him how and why this initiative came about. Romeo left the audience in shambles, but Sodano was the one who was really trembling.

On February 9, Benedict XVI received Ruini together with his right hand man, the secretary general of the CEI, bishop Giuseppe Betori. They both received the pope’s reassurances. News of the letter had not yet leaked to the outside.

But a few days later, the news agencies and newspapers were writing about it, attributing the idea for the letter to the pope and to his desire to decide ‘more collegially’ on a replacement for Ruini. And in fact, on the morning of February 14, as soon as he saw the complete text of the letter published in two newspapers, a very irritated Benedict XVI picked up the telephone and ordered that his confirmation of Ruini as president of the CEI be made public immediately. The pope’s order was so peremptory that the Vatican press office released the news before any of the other communications of the day.

By confirming Ruini, the pope invalidated the letter of Romeo, a.k.a Sodano, which had pegged Ruini as a has-been.

* * *

There’s something else that makes Sodano’s remaining in office questionable. Among the new cardinals chosen by the pope, there are personalities who constitute a living contradiction of the ecclesiastical geopolitics dear to the secretary of state.

For example, Sodano has always pursued a very submissive policy with China, in agreement with the most pro-Chinese of the cardinals in the curia, Roger Etchegaray of France, the author of a book on this subject that is almost utterly silent on the oppression of which Christians are the victims in that country.

Sodano once said that, in order to establish diplomatic relations with China, he was ready to move the Vatican nunciature from Taipei to Beijing ‘not tomorrow, but this very evening’. This statement provoked great irritation among the persecuted Chinese Catholics, and in particular with the combative bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, according to whom religious liberty should come before any sort of diplomatic accommodation.
It is bishop Zen who is the most closely watched of the new cardinals chosen by Benedict XVI. He will be the one to suggest the how and the when for a new policy on China for the Church.

Apart from Zen, pope Ratzinger wanted to create two other cardinals in Asia, a continent that Sodano has overlooked but which the present pope sees as crucial.

One of these is the archbishop of Seoul, and the apostolic administrator of Pyongyang, Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk, who is impatient to enter as a missionary into North Korea and is a staunch defender of life and of the family in a country that is a theatre of reckless experimentation in biotechnology.

Another is the archbishop of Manila, Gaudencio B. Rosales. The Philippines is the most Catholic country in Asia, with millions of emigrants all over the world, many of whom are persecuted on account of their faith in the Muslim countries where they work.

Benedict XVI has also brought about a correction of the previous Vatican line in regard to Islam. In removing Archbishop Fitzgerald from the curia, the pope has said the last word on the symposia that he loved to organize with Muslim leaders like sheikh Yussef-Al-Qaradwi or the heads of Al-Azhar, who signed ceremonious appeals for peace with the Vatican and then, the next day, inflamed the crowds by exalting holy war and the suicide terrorists.

The change of course desired by Benedict XVI also draws the Church closer to Israel. Sodano was a great admirer of Yasser Arafat, and is a supporter of the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, who is ardently pro-Palestinian. But Pope Ratzinger immediately flanked Sabbah with a more moderate auxiliary who will succeed him in two years, Fouad Twal of Jordan, previously the archbishop of Tunis. And is planning to appoint as the bishop of the Hebrew Christians who live in the state of Israel the present custodian of the Holy Land, Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who is viewed very favorably by the Israeli authorities.

Who will be the next secretary of state and when he will be nominated is a secret that Benedict XVI is guarding carefully. But it is certain that Sodano is on his way out.

With him gone, also gone will be a barrier to a decision on the fate of the powerful founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, with whom Sodano is very close. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has completed a thoroughly detailed preliminary investigation of the accusations against Maciel’s sexual abuse of his seminarians and violation of the sacrament of confession.

Last Good Friday, shortly before he was elected pope, Ratzinger indicated this sort of filth as one of the evils that must be eliminated from the Church.

The complete text of the letter sent to the Italian bishops without the pope’s knowledge:

Most Reverend Excellency,

As you know, next March 6 the mandate of the Most Eminent Cardinal Camillo Ruini as president of the CEI will come to a conclusion.

The Holy Father, who has always appreciated very much the service rendered by the Most Eminent Cardinal to the Italian Church, thinks nonetheless that, in part because of his upcoming seventy-fifth birthday, a change in the office of the presidency is in order.

To this end it is my duty and privilege to address Your Excellency, asking you to indicate to me, coram Domino and with courteous solicitude, the Prelate that you intend to suggest for the aforementioned office.

This consultation, in consideration of its importance and delicacy, is subject to the pontifical seal of secrecy, which requires the utmost caution with all persons.

Finally, I would ask you to return this letter together with your response, without keeping copies of anything.

Until then, I warmly thank you for the help that you, through the agency of this Apostolic Nunciature, shall desire to give the Successor of Peter in such an important and delicate matter.

Paolo Romeo, Apostolic Nuncio
Rome, January 26, 2006

The Vatican press release from February 14, 2006, invalidating the letter:
The Holy Father has confirmed Cardinal Camillo Ruini, his vicar general for the diocese of Rome, as president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, donec aliter provideatur.

The Latin formula donec aliter provideatur means until further notice.
In other words: Ruini has been confirmed for an undetermined length of time.

Controversial order opens new boarding school, Ultraconservative founder draws criticism and praise.

By JEFF PARROTT

 

South Bend Tribune
September 12, 2005
Picture caption:
Kevin McKenzie, left, and Gregory Heslip, Legionaries of Christ seminarians, speak about the order’s new “minor seminary” at Rolling Prairie for grades 7 through 12. Both men, now 23 and 24, say they first entered such schools at age 12 and 14.

 

ROLLING PRAIRIE — An ultraconservative and controversial Catholic group has opened a new boarding school for boys interested in the priesthood at the former Le Mans Academy.

The Legionaries of Christ is calling this “minor seminary” school, its third in the United States, Sacred Heart Apostolic School. It ultimately is to contain grades 7 through 12, but has begun this school year with a group of 18 boys in seventh and eighth grades. The school plans to add a grade level each year with an ultimate goal of 100 to 120 students, spokesman Jay Dunlap said.

The orthodox religious order, which claims 600 priests and 2,500 seminarians in 20 countries, has been embraced by conservative Catholics such as the late Pope John Paul II and actor/director Mel Gibson, whose movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” enraged many Jewish people over how they were portrayed.

But critics say the Legionaries of Christ recruits boys at too young an age for the priesthood, isolates them from their families and “brainwashes” them to follow its conservative doctrine, forbids members from criticizing their leaders, is ruthless in its fundraising, and, among other things, violates the confidentiality of confession by forcing seminarians to confess their sins to priests who also act as their superiors.

On top of those concerns are sexual abuse allegations from at least eight men — some of whom went on to become priests — against the congregation’s powerful founder, Rev. Marcial Maciel.The men, most of whom are Mexican, say Maciel molested them in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s while they were seminarians.

The Legion’s sharpest critic is a group called the Religious Groups Awareness International Network which formed in 2003 as a communications outlet for men and women who have had bad experiences with the Legion or its lay movement, Regnum Christi. The network could contain up to 800 members, ReGAIN board member Glenn Favreau said.

Is there an investigation?

Favreau, 41, entered a Legion seminary at age 20 and by 33 was just a few months away from ordination as a priest when he quit. He is now a law student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Favreau said he left partly because he came to realize that Maciel leads an opulent life, despite the vows of poverty Legionaries are supposed to take.

“I began to see less and less of Jesus Christ and more of power plays of individuals,” Favreau said.

As a seminarian, Favreau said he was not allowed much contact with his parents. Those who want to leave find it difficult, sometimes because they are convinced that if they leave they will go to hell, and sometimes because they have no money or resources, Favreau and other former Legion seminarians have said.

“They control people to the nth degree … they brainwash,” he said. “They really put a clamp on your conscience and everything in your conscience is managed and reported to a very small number of superiors.”

Dunlap, the Legion spokesman, categorically refuted ReGAIN’s accusations, and called the group a “vocal minority.”

“They’re people who were Legionaries for some time but they weren’t happy, and now they’ve chosen to be negative about it, which is sad,” Dunlap said.

“Time and time again we’ve had families send more than one son to our schools because they see they’re getting an excellent education and spiritual formation,” Dunlap said. “The vast majority of families that have had an experience with our schools speak very highly of them.”

Dunlap said the Legion has investigated ReGAIN’s complaints and found no evidence of their validity. And he said the Vatican conducted a thorough investigation in the late 1950s into the sexual abuse allegations against Maciel, and found they were unsubstantiated.

Dunlap referred to a statement issued in May by the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, reportedly a longtime friend of Maciel’s, which said there was no longer an investigation and none was foreseen. The statement was picked up widely by news outlets worldwide.

However, the National Catholic Reporter published a story a few days later noting that it is the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly headed by the man who is now Pope Benedict XVI, that has authority over such cases.

John Allen, who covers the Vatican for the National Catholic Reporter, told The Tribune that his sources, whom he does not name, say the investigation remains ongoing.

“The office that handles these cases has said nothing, but I and others have reported that they’re continuing their preliminary investigation,” Allen said.

More alleged victims came forward in 1994, after being angered when Pope John Paul II called Maciel an “efficacious guide to youth,” according to a National Catholic Reporter story.

Father Richard McBrien, a nationally known theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, believes the sexual abuse allegations are credible, based largely on his reading of a book detailing them, “Vows of Silence — The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II,” by Catholic writers Jason Berry and Gerald Renner.

In a review on the book’s cover, McBrien calls the Legion “cultlike.”

“If he were a United States priest living here under the new guidelines adopted by the Conference of Bishops, he would be removed from ministry,” McBrien said of Maciel, 84, who founded the order in Mexico City in 1941 and stepped down as its leader last year. “It reflects on the whole congregation, of course it does. What kind of organization do we have here?”

Dunlap said McBrien is more likely to believe the allegations because he is a liberal who disagrees with the Legion’s conservative dogma.

McBrien also has a problem with recruiting boys for the priesthood at such a young age.

“I think it’s pretty bad,” he said. “If I were a parent, I wouldn’t let them do it.”

But Kevin McKenzie, a 23-year-old Legion seminarian who works on recruiting, said he knew at age 7 that he wanted to be a priest.

“I said, ‘Hey, I can do this and maybe this is what God wants me to be,'” he said. “It’s not like everyone who goes there becomes a priest, it’s just an environment where you can focus on whether you want to be a priest.”

Not welcome everywhere

Bishops in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Columbus, Ohio, have banned the Legion from operating in their areas, while another diocese, Baton Rouge, La., has expressed concerns.

In a November letter to his pastors and parish life administrators, St. Paul/Minneapolis Bishop Harry Flynn said neither the Legion nor its lay group, Regnum Christi, were to be active in any way in the archdiocese. Flynn wrote that pastors “continue to sense that a ‘parallel church’ is being encouraged, one that separates persons from the local parish and archdiocese, and creates competing structures. That is simply unacceptable.”

Fort Wayne/South Bend Bishop John D’Arcy declined to comment on the Legion.

Gary Diocese Bishop Dale Melczek, in whose diocese Rolling Prairie lies, gave the Legion his permission to open the school, but not to operate programs, raise money or recruit future seminarians in diocese parishes, said his spokesman, Father Brian Chadwick.

McBrien urged Melczek to make sure the Legion confines itself to running the school.

“My advice to him is to be careful,” McBrien said. “Keep a watch over them because these types of groups try to push the envelope and expand their influence in the diocese.”

While the Legion of Christ has drawn opposition from some bishops at the diocesan level, it has benefited from some strong support in the Vatican.

In November, Pope John Paul II granted the congregation authority to operate the Pontifical Institute, “Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center,” in Jerusalem. The complex, which includes a church, restaurants, a conference center and a hotel, acts as a welcome center for visiting clergy and Catholic individuals and families from around the world.

Also, the Congregation for Bishops has entrusted the Regina Apostolorum, the Legionaries of Christ university in Rome, with annual training sessions for newly appointed bishops from around the world, and Maciel was in the front row for the pope’s 2001 visit to Mexico, Allen said.

Dunlap noted that the Legion plays an active role in many dioceses, such as Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis.

“Places where the Legion is known and its institutions are set, we’re just part of the landscape,” Dunlap said.

Favreau, with ReGAIN, claims the Legion is losing so many seminarians that it needs to bolster recruiting by opening new minor seminaries, in addition to its ones in Center Harbor, N.H., and Colfax, Calif.

But Dunlap said the opposite is true.

“We wouldn’t be starting a school here if we were shrinking,” he said. “We’ve started a school here because our school in New Hampshire is bursting at the seams.”

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