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Maciel denies sexual abuse allegations

By Catholic News Service and NCR Staff

The founder and head of the Legionaries of Christ has categorically denied recently published allegations that he sexually abused several former Legionaries when they were teenage seminarians in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

"In all cases they [the accusations] are defamations and falsities with no foundation whatsoever," Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado wrote in a Feb. 28 letter to The Hartford Courant daily newspaper, which reported the allegations as its lead story Feb. 23.

Not even "the suggestion of such acts" was ever mentioned in his relationships with the men making the accusations, Maciel said in his statement, which was also sent to NCR.

Fr. Owen Kearns, publisher of the Legionaries-owned Catholic newspapers National Catholic Register and Twin Circle in Hamden, Conn., and U.S. spokesman for the Legionaries in Cheshire, Conn., accused the Courant of downplaying "critical evidence disproving the allegations." He called the accusations part of a "long-standing vendetta by a close-knit group of elderly Mexican and Spanish ex-members of the order."

Maciel, 76, founded the Legionaries in Mexico in 1941 when he was still a theology student. It now has a presence in 18 countries, including about 40 priests in the United States. In the latest Vatican yearbook, the order lists 101 religious houses and a total 1,410 lay and clerical members, of whom 343 are priests. The Courant reported that the accusers, now men in their 50s and 60s, claimed Maciel had molested more than 30 boys in seminaries in Spain and Italy in the early decades of the order's existence.

Chief among the accusers were Fr. Felix AlarcĒn, 63, who left the Legionaries in 1966 to become a priest of the Rockville Centre, N.Y., diocese, and Juan Vaca, 59, who transferred from the Legionaries to the Rockville Centre diocese in 1978 and left the priesthood in 1989.

The Courant reported specific claims by nine accusers and the claim and subsequent retraction by a 10th accuser. Most of the accusations involved alleged incidents of mutual masturbation. The newspaper also reported that each of the accusers it interviewed said Maciel was addicted to painkilling drugs in the 1950s, when he was suspended for two years as superior during a Vatican investigation.

The Courant reported that the order provided statements by three physicians, however, two dated in 1956 and one undated, stating that the priest was in good health and had no drug problem.

Kearns described the physicians who examined Maciel as "three of the most prestigious physicians in Rome."

Kearns said in his statement, "The definitive disproof of the sensational drug-addiction charge eliminates the credibility of the sources on which the Courant is relying for all of the remaining charges in its story. ... This fact eliminates their credibility for the charges of sexual abuse." The Hartford Courant reported that several defenders of Maciel claimed the accusers had asked them to lie to back up their accusations against the priest. The accusers said they never engaged in a conspiracy and never asked anyone to lie about the priest.

In addition to the three common religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, Kearns said that the Legionaries of Christ take a fourth "vow of charity," in which they promise they will not criticize their superiors or their governance to others and will report anyone who does. Kearns said that vow is based on the principle that anyone who has a problem with a superior or his governance should take it up directly with that superior, or with someone higher up, so that communities do not get caught up in an atmosphere of complaining.

Maciel said he bears "no ill will" against his accusers.

"Rather, I offer my pain and prayers for each one of them, in the hope that they will recover their peace of soul and remove from their hearts whatever resentment has moved them to make these false accusations," he wrote.

He added, "I do not know what has led them to make these totally false accusations 20, 30 and 40 years after leaving the congregation. I am all the more surprised since I still have letters from some of them from the 1970s in which they express their gratitude and our mutual friendship."

National Catholic Reporter, March 14, 1997