Legionaries of Christ: Marcial Maciel's legacy of sexual abuse

Susan Campbell
Hartford Courant
June 27

The man calling from the airport sounded tired. Earlier, Jose Raul Gonzalez Lara filed a lawsuit against the Legionaries of Christ, and the estate of his dead father, the disgraced Marcial Maciel, the founder of that militaristic and ritualistic Roman Catholic order.

Maciel died in 2008, but not before he sexually abused untold numbers of boys and seminarians, fathered children with more than one woman, and turned his predator-attention toward his own children, according to the lawsuit.The day of the announcement, Raul Lara was in Minnesota. Jeff Anderson, who has led the charge in filing suits against clergy-predators, is his attorney. He is working with the law firm of Stratton Faxon, of Connecticut, home of the Legionaries.

The legal goings-on and interviews were conducted in English. The Mexican native studied the language during a two-year period of his tortured childhood, in Dublin. Raul Lara traveled the world with his father, who was so shrouded in secrecy the son only discovered the man was a priest when he, in his teens, saw Maciel's photo on a magazine cover.

Maciel had told his son that he worked for the CIA — a plausible cover for the priest's double-dealing, deceit, and perversion.

Maciel, the lawsuit maintains, began sexually abusing his son when Raul Lara was 7. In public, Maciel was a prodigious fundraiser, and a priest favored by beloved Pope John Paul II, who upon Maciel's 50th anniversary wrote a letter praising the predator as an "efficacious guide to youth." For his 60th anniversary, Rome threw him a party.The lawsuit maintains that the Legionaries knew — or should have known —- of Maciel's improprieties, yet they did nothing.

Besides sexually abusing children, Maciel, the lawsuit says, also used those children and adolescents to acquire the pain killers to which he was addicted. Only in 2006 was Maciel stripped of his priestly duties, and last month, the Vatican took over the order. Maciel was not excommunicated; he wasn't even censured until the cacaphony of protests grew so loud that even the Vatican could hear it.
Is it any wonder that so many Roman Catholics have lost faith in their leadership, and that some Roman Catholics have lost their faith entirely?

Pope Benedict XVI has said he is sorry, but victims of the systemic abuse look to the legal system for surcease. And sometimes, they can't even do that.

"Between George Reardon and Marcial Maciel," says attorney Joel T. Faxon, "we've got the whole world covered."
Reardon was a serial sexual abuser while he worked as a respected endocrinologist at Hartford's Francis Hospital and Medical Center, an entity that, with the Archdiocese of Hartford, recently lobbied successfully within the Connecticut legislature to make sure victims would not get their day in court.

Like Reardon, Maciel was held in high esteem in a world where his victims were delivered to him, with shockingly few questions asked by his superiors. Reardon sexually abused children in a bogus growth study that never saw the light of day. Maciel attacked the youthful faithful anxious to draw closer to God within the confines of a secretive religious order.

What they got had nothing to do with God.The lawsuit says that under an assumed name, Maciel used Legionaries' funds to support his family, which included several children. The Vatican has acknowledged one child of Maciel's — but not Raul Lara, who appears in photographs taken with the priest (in street clothes) all over the world.

After the media storm, Raul Lara flew back to Mexico and the supportive arms of his family —- including his mother, a brother, and his girlfriend.

It was tough answering questions in his second language, and tough to talk about sexual abuse in public, but he tells himself that this is for a greater good. Raul Lara says, "It feels like this is going to make a lot of people start talking about sexual abuse; so I think my voice can help them."