Abuse Case Offers a View of the Vatican's Politics - Rev. Marcial
_http://ritualabuse.us_ (http://ritualabuse.us/)
Abuse Case Offers a View of the Vatican's Politics By DANIEL J. WAKIN and
JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
May 2, 2010 The two former Mexican seminarians had gone to the Vatican in
1998 to personally deliver a case recounting decades of sexual abuse by one
of the most powerful priests in the Roman Catholic Church, the Rev.
Marcial Maciel Degollado.
As they left, they ran into the man who would hold Father Maciel's fate in
his hands, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and kissed his ring. The encounter
was no accident. Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to meet them, witnesses later
said, and their case was soon accepted. But in little more than a year, word
emerged that Cardinal Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — halted the
inquiry. "It isn't prudent," he had told a Mexican bishop, according to
two people who later talked to the bishop. For five years, the case remained
stalled, possibly a hostage to Father Maciel's powerful protectors in the
Curia, the Vatican's governing apparatus, and his own deep influence at the
Holy See. In any case, it took Cardinal Ratzinger — by then Pope Benedict —
until 2006, eight years after the case went before him, to address Father
Maciel's abuses by removing him from priestly duties and banishing him to
a life of prayer and penitence, though without publicly acknowledging his
wrongs or the suffering of his victims....
A close look at the record shows that the case was marked by the same
delays and bureaucratic caution that have emerged in the handling of other
sexual abuse matters crossing Benedict's desk, whether as an archbishop in
Munich or a cardinal in Rome. Benedict's supporters believe he was trying to
take action on the Maciel case but was thwarted by other powerful church
officials.
But advocates for Father Maciel's victims say that the Vatican's eventual
investigation and reckoning in the case were too little, too late. The Rev.
Alberto Athié Gallo, a Mexican priest who in 1998 tried to bring
allegations of sexual abuse by Father Maciel to the attention of Cardinal
Ratzinger,
said the Vatican allowed Father Maciel, who died in 2008, to lead a double
life for decades....Former Legion seminarians have said that Father Maciel
abused them from the early 1940s to the early '60s, when they were 10 to
16 years old. For years, Father Maciel had cultivated powerful allies among
the cardinals, through gifts and cash donations, according to reporting by
Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter. Mr. Berry is co-author of a
book about the order and helped break the story of the priest's abuses....
Father Maciel's troubles with the Vatican dated to 1956, when his personal
secretary accused him of drug abuse and financial mismanagement; he was
suspended for two years during an investigation, after which he was cleared
and reinstated in 1959. "From that moment on, he was completely protected by
all the high offices of the Vatican," said Fernando M. González, a
sociologist who wrote a book about the Maciel case, based on more than 200
previously undisclosed documents from church archives, that was published in
2006.
Reports of problems in the order persisted, including sexual abuse
allegations forwarded to the Vatican starting in the late 1970s. In 1997, nine
former Legion seminarians — a number of them prominent priests and
professionals — detailed their abuse at the hands of Father Maciel in a series
of
articles in The Hartford Courant by Mr. Berry and Gerald Renner....Father
Maciel's dismissal was announced on May 19, 2006. But it was not until
Saturday
that the Vatican officially spelled out why: Father Maciel's "objectively
immoral behavior" included criminal acts "and showed a life devoid of
scruples and authentic religious feeling."
_http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/europe/03maciel.html_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/europe/03maciel.html)
