As they marked the quarter-century anniversary of revelations that tarnished the legacy of St. John Paul II, three of Maciel’s victims are nonetheless in search of reparations from the Legion to compensate for the abuse they suffered and the “ethical” hurt completed to their reputations by the order.
That they had refused earlier compensation provides that their fellow survivors accepted, and a mediation course of begun in 2019 has stalled, in line with emails and paperwork supplied to The Related Press.
The Vatican in 2010 took over the Mexico-based Legion and imposed a technique of reform after an investigation confirmed that Maciel had sexually abused seminarians and fathered at the least three youngsters with two girls. The Vatican discovered he had created a system of energy constructed on silence, deceit and obedience that enabled him lead a double life.
The findings have been certainly not information to the Holy See: Paperwork from Vatican archives present how a succession of popes, cardinals and bishops beginning within the Nineteen Fifties merely turned a blind eye to credible reviews that Maciel was a con artist, drug addict, pedophile and non secular fraud. The Vatican and particularly John Paul, nonetheless, appreciated his means to usher in vocations and donations.
The fact of Maciel’s depravity burst into the general public area Feb. 23, 1997, when The Hartford Courant revealed a prolonged expose by investigative journalists Jason Berry and the late Gerald Renner about Maciel and the order, whose U.S. headquarters have been based mostly in Connecticut.
The story, which fashioned the premise of a 2004 e book “Vows of Silence,” quoted a number of victims by identify who independently reported that Maciel would carry them into his bed room at evening, and underneath the pretense of stomach ache, induce them to masterbate him.
“When The Courant ran the lengthy investigative piece Renner and I did on Maciel, we thought Pope John Paul II would see the sunshine and punish Maciel,” Berry instructed the AP in an electronic mail. He famous that different mainstream media solely started reporting on clergy sexual abuse after the Boston Globe’s “Highlight” revelations in 2002. “By then, John Paul’s blind religion in Maciel was a cover-up by some other time period, and lasted until his dying.”
A 12 months after the unique Courant story, in 1998, the victims filed a proper canonical grievance towards Maciel with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Religion, the place the case languished till after John Paul died. Maciel was sentenced in 2006 to a lifetime of “penance and prayer,” and he died in 2008, nonetheless thought of a saint by the Legion.
In 2020, the Legion publicly retracted the “damaging institutional and private judgments in regards to the character and motivations of the individuals who made professional and mandatory accusations” within the authentic Courant expose. Naming the unique victims, it mentioned “Right now we acknowledge as prophetic their accusations in favor of fact and justice.”
However Jose Barba, one of the vocal of the unique eight survivors, desires the Legion to formally retract what he calls the “lies” the order supplied to the Courant to discredit him and the opposite victims. They embody what he says have been a falsified letter from a Chilean bishop who had investigated Maciel within the Nineteen Fifties, and false statements from 4 Mexicans who claimed the victims had tried to enlist them in a conspiracy towards Maciel.
Barba, who says he represents fellow survivors Arturo Jurado and Jose Antonio Perez Olvera, drafted a proposed letter to the Courant and the Vatican newspaper that he wished the Legion to undergo retract the claims. However then Legion superior, the Rev. Eduardo Robles-Gil, refused throughout a December 2019 mediation assembly in Mexico Metropolis, Barba mentioned.
In a Jan. 4, 2020 abstract of that assembly, Barba mentioned the Legion’s preliminary calculus of a low five-figure settlement provide for every of the three remaining victims was a “humiliation,” and he proposed a workforce of 5 arbitration specialists to find out a extra “simply” reparation.
Robles-Gil signed the abstract however wrote: “I obtain this with out accepting the method that’s requested for and it stays at our consideration to just accept it or not.”
The Legion’s new superior, the Rev. John Connor, tried unsuccessfully to have interaction with Barba after his February 2020 election, sending two letters that went unanswered till Barba emailed him on Jan. 5, 2021, in search of to restart negotiations.
Connor assured him he wished to “discover methods to contribute to heal and shut the painful occasions of the historical past of our congregation.” However in an electronic mail, Connor mentioned Barba’s proposal for 5 arbitration specialists wouldn’t assist “to find a shared decision.”
Barba by no means replied. “I don’t belief them as a result of it’s not in good religion,” he instructed the AP.
In an announcement to the AP, Legion spokesman the Rev. Aaron Smith famous that the order had reached settlements with a lot of the historic victims and hoped for a decision with the remaining ones.
“We’re unhappy that assembly nonetheless has not occurred, particularly contemplating the optimistic expertise of the encounters with different victims of Fr. Maciel,” Smith mentioned in an announcement. “We proceed to stay hopeful it is going to happen within the close to future allowing open dialogue with him.”
Barba, in the meantime, says he’s getting outdated and his two confreres are ailing. Whereas they’re hailed by ex-Legionaries as “los 8 Magnificos” (the Magnificent Eight) for having stood as much as Maciel and the order, Barba recollects a Nov. 8, 1997 letter he and the others wrote to John Paul, translated into Polish, asking for the pope to listen to their ache and do one thing.
“It seems inconceivable to us, Holy Father, that our grave revelations and complaints mattered completely nothing to you,” they wrote, in line with a replica of the letter supplied to the AP. “We wish the church and society to know that each one we wish is justice: not just for professional private vindication, however for the great of the church and society.”
