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L to R: Legionaries of Christ logo; Marcial Macial (photo: Legion of Christ and DominikHoffmann, Own work, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia, c. 2004)
By Matthew McDonald, EWTN News, July 22, 2024
Matthew McDonald Matthew McDonald is a staff reporter for The National Catholic Register and the editor of New Boston Post. He lives in Massachusetts.
Instead, Father Marcial Maciel continued as head of the religious order for another five decades before the Vatican removed him from ministry because of allegations of sexual abuse and other misconduct.
Pope Pius XII’s Vatican was on the verge of removing from the priesthood the founder of the Legionaries of Christ over sexual-abuse allegations in 1956, 50 years before he was removed from active ministry, documents from the time show.
Father Marcial Maciel (1920-2008), who founded the religious congregation as a young seminarian in Mexico in 1941, was investigated in the mid-1950s on claims that he sexually abused boys and abused morphine, according to a story published Sunday by The Associated Press. He was temporarily removed as head of the Legionaries, but later regained control over the congregation not long after Pius XII died in 1958. …
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