With elite backing, Catholic order has pull in Mexico

La negación como puerta al abismo
Escrito por El Universal
Viernes, 03 de Abril de 2009 21:27

La negación como puerta al abismo
María Teresa Priego Escritora

EL UNIVERSAL“Nunca pensó que este hombre (Marcial Maciel) la fuera a aventar, peor que si exprimieras un limón y ya exprimido lo aventaras a la basura”. Flora Garza Barragán, la hija de Flora Barragán, en entrevista con Aristegui. Contó cómo su mamá “lo adoraba”, y cómo la benefactora de Maciel, cuyos donativos crearon el Instituto Cumbres, no volvió a saber de él. Maciel no le tomó una llamada, ni en los últimos días de vida, de quien fuera su compañera más leal. La señora Barragán había “servido”. ¿Cuántos seres humanos fueron “sirviendo” en el camino de Maciel? Silenciados. Destruidos por dentro. Desechados.

Para los niños y adolescentes sexualmente abusados, el doble juego alienante y atroz: el discurso del amor y el abuso en la realidad. La fascinación ante la cercanía del mito y los “dolores intestinales” de “Mon père”, que precisaban “masajes”, y venían acompañados de “dispensas papales” a voluntad, y el horror de saberse sometidos, cosificados. Víctimas de abusos sexuales incestuosos. El “voto de silencio” cortaba brutalmente la posibilidad de escapar. Una cotidianidad sicotizante, en la que la realidad vivenciada y sufrida no existía. Bastaba la palabra de Maciel para abolirla.

El talento de Maciel fue inmenso. El “líder espiritual”, mimado por Juan Pablo II. Tenía ese “don”, tan característico de los perversos narcisistas: intuir con finísima agudeza qué es lo que quiere el otro. ¿En qué consiste su fragilidad? ¿Qué es lo que necesita ese otro escuchar para sentirse amado, confirmado en su existencia? Y la vulnerabilidad de cada uno/a se convertía —para él— en una herramienta de manipulación y poder. Dicen que llevaba una doble vida. ¿Alguien sabe cuántas vidas encarna un sujeto camaleón?
Portador del carisma de Cristo, abusador de seminaristas. ¿Pareja sexual de la madre de su hija?
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January 23, 2006 By Jose deCordoba

Mexico City -- Two years ago, a handful of Latin American billionaires and some of the world's top financiers gathered at New York's Plaza Hotel. They were honoring Mexican plutocrat Carlos Slim and raising money for schools for poor children run by the Legion of Christ, a fast-growing conservative Roman Catholic order.
Among those giving speeches at the black-tie gala were the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the 85-year-old Mexican founder of the Legion, and Citigroup Inc. Chairman Sanford Weill. Within hours, the diverse group of 500 well-wishers raised $725,000.

The Legion was in its element. Founded in 1941, the order concentrates on ministering to the wealthy and powerful in the belief that by evangelizing society's leaders, the beneficial impact on society is multiplied. Like the Jesuits who centuries ago whispered in the ear of Europe's princes, the Legion's priests today are the confessors and chaplains to some of the most powerful businessmen in Latin America.

"The soul of a trash collector is as important as the soul of Carlos Slim, but if Slim is converted, think of the influence and power for good he would wield," says Luanne Zurlo, a former Goldman Sachs securities analyst who organized the benefit. Mr. Slim, Latin America's richest man with a fortune estimated at $24 billion, says he's not a highly devout Catholic but is helping the Legion create 50 low-cost universities in Latin America.

The Legion has become an important player in promoting the Vatican's social agenda and defending Catholicism's Latin American heartland from inroads made by evangelical Protestant groups.

When the church was struggling to find priests in Germany, the Legion recruited German-speaking seminarians from Brazil to fill the gap. In Rome and Mexico City, Legion universities offer advanced degrees in bioethics that stress the limits morality should put on science.
The Legion's critics charge that its focus on the wealthy reinforces the sharp class divides that have long held Latin America back socially and economically. They say the Legion fosters intolerance and social climbing rather than devotion to Christ's gospel. Some in Mexico, instead of referring to the order's followers as Legionnaires of Christ, call them the "Millionaires of Christ."
More troubling for the Legion, Father Maciel, the order's founder, has been dogged for nearly a decade by widely publicized accusations that he sexually molested at least eight teenage seminarians from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Father Maciel denies the accusations. Many Catholic activists, angry with the church over cover-ups in priest sex-abuse cases, believe the Vatican has protected Father Maciel because of the Legion's reach and power.
The Legion operates in some 20 countries, including the U.S., Chile, Spain, Brazil and Ireland, but its influence is greatest in Mexico. Here it runs the country's fastest-growing network of Catholic schools for the well-to-do, and each spring mobilizes 20,000 volunteers to travel to remote towns and urge wavering Catholics to keep the faith.

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