Cardinal backs intervention in
Legionaries crisis
By Mark Greaves
10 March 2009

Cardinal George Pell has become the first senior Church figure to call for outside intervention to tackle the crisis afflicting the Legion of Christ.

The cardinal, speaking in Oxford last week, said a Church authority external to the Legion should investigate its founder's corruption and re-examine its charism.

His comments follow revelations that the Legion's founder, Fr Marcial Maciel, who died last year, secretly had a mistress and fathered a child.

The cardinal said it was "not entirely reasonable" to expect the leadership of the Legion to deal with these revelations without any outside help.

He said: "I think there should be an intervention, perhaps a visitation or something like that. I don't know what the facts of the matter are, the alleged corruption, if that's the word, on the part of the founder, to what extent there was a cover-up, to what extent the whole rationale of the order [should be] re-examined, but I think it should be sponsored by some extra-Legionary Church agency."

The cardinal stressed that there were "an enormous number of good people in the Legionaries, their members, their seminarians, and their lay members".

The Legion of Christ has a strong presence in Australia and has about 800 priests worldwide. Its lay movement, Regnum Christi, has 70,000 members around the world.

Its leadership reportedly learned about Fr Maciel's double life some months ago and tried to inform its members before the news broke in the press.

Portraits of Fr Maciel have been taken down in seminaries and members have expressed their shock in messages posted online.

In recent weeks its leader, Fr Alvaro Corcuera, has caused growing anger among some Legionaries by refusing to disclose full details of Fr Maciel's corruption and by not apologising to his victims.

Cardinal Pell's call for outside intervention has been made already by several prominent Catholics in America.

American commentator George Weigel said a "brutally frank" review of the Legion's institutional culture - and an investigation of possible complicity in Fr Maciel's corruption - was needed urgently.