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Last Updated: Nov 23rd, 2009 - 21:35:02 |
Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of ignoring for seven years charges that Fr Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, had sexually abused nine teenagers in his organisation - because Fr Maciel was a close friend of Pope John Paul II.
In 1997 the then Cardinal Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body which has the power to excommunicate priests guilty of sexual abuse, when Bishop John R McCann of New York forwarded him detailed charges of sexual abuse made by Fr Juan Vaca, a priest in Bishop McCann's diocese. The charges were in the form of a 12-page letter to Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, who founded the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative Catholic evangelical order, in Mexico in 1941.
"Everything you did contradicts the beliefs of the Church and the order," Fr Vaca wrote in his open letter. "How many innumerable times did you wake me in the middle of the night and had me with you, abusing my innocence. Nights of fear, so many nights of absolute fear: so many nights of lost sleep, that on more than one occasion placed my own psychological health in jeopardy."
Fr Vaca was one of nine former members of Legionaries of Christ who charged Fr Maciel with having sexually abused them when they were teenage seminarians in the order in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The accusers included three professors, a teacher, a lawyer and an engineer as well as the priest.
Another priest and former member of the Legionaries, Juan Manuel Fernandez Armenabar, made a deathbed declaration denouncing Fr Maciel's sexual abuse. But despite the gravity of the charges, Cardinal Ratzinger took no action. The Vatican confirmed that it had received Fr Vaca's letter, but nothing more was said.
When Cardinal Ratzinger was asked about the accusations he brushed the questions aside. On one occasion he literally slapped the wrist of an American television reporter, Brian Ross, who had the temerity to raise the issue. On another occasion Cardinal Ratzinger said: "One can't put on trial such a close friend of the Pope's as Marcial Maciel."
Such an indulgent attitude to the alleged homosexual crimes of a senior priest - who had been appointed grand chancellor of Regina Apostolorum, a new, richly endowed pontifical college on the outskirts of Rome - contrasts with Pope Benedict's attitude to the Church's admitted homosexuals. Cardinal Ratzinger was relentless in his condemnation of liberal clerics who offered outreach to Catholic homosexuals or tried to moderate the harshness of the Church's view of a sexual proclivity that Cardinal Ratzinger defined as "an intrinsic moral evil". He banned practising homosexuals from receiving Mass and halted stealthy efforts by gays within the Church to change church teaching.
In December last year, seven years after the charges were filed against Fr Maciel, the Vatican announced that it would investigate them. A month later, Fr Maciel stepped down as leader of the Legionaries of Christ.
This week the spokesman for the eight men still alive said he thought the Church's change of heart was a way for Cardinal Ratzinger to improve his chances of becoming Pope. Jose Barba, a professor of Latin America studies, told Reuters in Mexico: "It would have been very embarrassing for the cardinal to turn up at the conclave with the reputation of someone who had covered up a scandal."
Professor Barba added: "Was Cardinal Ratzinger totally and solely responsible [for the failure to investigate]? I think that to a great extent he was because it was his department."
Fr Maciel denies all the claims. Three years ago he said on his website that he "never engaged in the sort of repulsive behaviour these men accuse me of".
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