New Maciel documentary a 'cathartic' experience, Legionaries head says

(OSV News) -- A new documentary on the life and crimes of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado was another chance for members of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi to confront the truth of their founder's dark past and the suffering inflicted on innocent victims, said Father John Connor, general director of the congregation.

In a letter to members of Legionaries of Christ published online Sept. 16, Father Connor said he and other Legionaries who watched the HBO docuseries "Marcial Maciel: The Wolf of God," saw it as "a cathartic experience" that "challenges us to face our history again."

"In this very humiliation lies a grace," he wrote. "The Lord frees us from institutional and personal pride by allowing us to inhabit a history marked by contradiction. The memory of our founder's sins and their impact on the institution he founded is not simply a call to justice and reparation -- which are necessary -- but also a divine pedagogy that preserves us from the temptation to boast about our works."

The documentary, which premiered on HBO Aug. 14, delved into the history of the founder's disturbing past, including his abuse of minor seminarians, his addiction to pain medication, as well as his double life with a young woman with whom he fathered children and whom he also sexually abused.

A significant portion of the four-part docuseries also centered on revelations made public in 2024 that Maciel's crimes were known by the Vatican as far back as the 1950s.

According to the archives of Pope Pius XII, which were opened in 2020, the Vatican was poised to take action against Maciel in 1956 and was planning to remove him from the priesthood. However, upon Pius XII's death in 1958, Maciel's allies took advantage of the leadership vacuum to clear his name, The Associated Press reported.

In response to questions sent by OSV News Sept. 16, Kerrie Rivard, director of communications for the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi in North America, said Father Connor's letter summarized the feelings felt by members of the congregation and that the docuseries offered members "an opportunity" to understand its history and to listen to the experiences of those who suffered.

"We are grateful that the producers worked to shed light on our history, and especially for the victims who so courageously and eloquently told their stories," Rivard said. "We have enormous gratitude and respect for them, and reiterate our apologies for how they were treated in the past when they first spoke out."

According to Rivard, the Legionaries of Christ was contacted by HBO producers and accepted an invitation to participate in its production "as an act of responsibility -- facing our history with a desire for truth, recognizing the damage caused, and contributing to a more complete understanding of past events."

Recognizing the concerns and broken trust of survivors, Rivard told OSV News that the congregation has worked with the Vatican and independent agencies in order to reach out to victims and reform "unhealthy structures and norms" that facilitated past abuses.

However, following the docuseries' release, a group of 27 priests and former members of the Legionaries of Christ released a statement Sept. 2, saying the congregation's attempts to confront its founder's past and its participation in the documentary, "omits the existence of those who asked for and sought the complete, unvarnished truth and clear justice for the victims of Maciel and the system of government he created from the beginning."

"Most of us did not leave scandalized by Maciel's life of abuse and crime, which was certainly scandalous, but rather by the inaction of superiors and the grave lack of trust they fostered," the statement read.

The group said that while the Legionaries of Christ has highlighted some progress in recognizing "the evil done by Maciel," including a website detailing the findings of investigations into its founder, it failed to acknowledge "the constant ambiguity with which they continued to praise his figure and harm those of us who asked that the whole truth be told and sought."

"Years later, it seems as if the whole problem was Maciel and only Maciel, but the Legionaries never entered a path of acknowledging complicity or responsibility," the group said. "No one resigned, and a line of continuity was maintained in the group of older superiors."

Regarding actions taken against those who enabled Maciel's decades of abuse, Rivard cited the Vatican's 2010 statement following an apostolic visitation, which only acknowledged "a deplorable discrediting and distancing" of those who expressed doubts about Maciel's conduct that "created around him a defense mechanism that for a long time rendered him unassailable."

"No proceedings were opened for criminal concealment," Rivard told OSV News.

"During these years, there was a complete change of major superiors in the congregation, the constitutions were rewritten, and unhealthy exercises of authority were removed from practice, including the 'vow of silence' that was mentioned in the documentary," she said, referring to a so-called fourth vow Maciel added in order to prevent members from speaking against him.

However, for the former Legionaries of Christ members, it seemed false for the congregation to present itself "as a healthy group that reacted as best it could and with the best intentions to the discovery of the founder's immorality."

"The fact that most Legionaries did not know anything, as the Holy See's 2010 statement expressed, does not mean that there were not some who knew, who covered up, and who handled the situation immorally," the statement said. "The Legion has never done anything to clarify this."

Despite the concerns, Father Connor said in his letter that the Legionaries of Christ is preparing its historical archive which will be opened to "internal and external historians. He also noted that a specific date has not been set for its release given the complexity of transcribing and digitizing the archive's contents for "future research."

Father Connor also said the congregation commissioned an unnamed "internationally renowned psychiatrist" to conduct a posthumous psychological study of Maciel "in order to better understand the complexities of his personality and behavior."