Legionaries of Christ Declared “Cured and Cleaned” by Vatican Delegate as He Takes His Leave

Nicole Winfield of Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/popes-envoy-legion-ends-mandate-22663956 reports that Cardinal Velasio DePaolis’ three year term has now come to an end and he celebrated his last mass as Papal Delegate near the end of February, 2014. He declared the Legion to be cured and cleaned

The departing Delegate commented that The Legionaries of Christ are reconciled with themselves, with their history, the world and the church.

Nicole Winfield commented that the Legion scandal is one of the most egregious cases of how the Vatican put the interests of the church ahead of sex abuse victims because Maciel was held in such high esteem by Pope John Paul II and Vatican cardinals, despite decades of well-founded reports that he was a pedophile and a fraud.

ReGAIN Comment

Cured and Cleaned? ? ? Wow! What an accomplishment! The delegate’s statements might be more meaningful if they came from an independent and objective outside source rather than the primary person responsible.

We would be interested to hear more about how and in what ways the Legion has been cured and what it was that the Delegate felt needed to be cured and how it was accomplished. This website contains hundreds of articles that provide information explaining what needs curing and cleaning in the Legion. We have been waiting and watching and hoping for years that that the cultish structure and methodology of the Legion and consecrated life in Regnum Christi would be reformed. Unfortunately, that golden opportunity has now been wasted.

We did notice that during the time a Vatican delegate was present that a few of the mind control practices were eased ( (temporarily perhaps?) Although the private vows and solemn promises were eliminated, the spirit of these seems to be lingering on. After all those decades of charity (never speaking ill of superiors) how comfortable are Legionaries and consecrated Regnum Christi members today if they dare to criticize or even question their leaders?

Information control, even under the watchful eyes of the Vatican is still evident. The members were finally allowed to have their own private e-mail addresses. However, there are reports that the information in the members’ e-mail messages coming in and going out are monitored. If so then the improvement in respecting privacy is only an illusion.

The number of total Regnum Christi members have been historically exaggerated. For years until recently they claimed to have 70,000 Regnum Christi lay members. Very recently they have lowered this to 30,000. Can anyone believe either figure?

The Legionaries have been declared to be reconciled with themselves. That’s nice. Does that mean the stampede for the exit doors will stop? They are also declared to be reconciled with their history. We would question that claim because the details of past investigations have not been made public. How can anyone be reconciled with their history unless they know the full truth about their history? How can they feel comfortable about what happened when they don’t know which of their current leaders / superiors aided and abetted their fraudulent founder for decade after decade? How can they be reconciled to their history when they can’t trust their own leaders to tell them the truth about what that history is? How do Legionary members feel about electing a new director general who has been commonly referred to as a spiritual son of Father Marcial Macieland who after his election said that he wanted everything to go back to normal?

We wonder how they can be reconciled with the world. Did they really make a sincere effort to bring about justice with victims? Not according to victimized friends of ReGAIN. We noticed a reluctance by the Legion to acknowledge specific victims as much as possible. The apologies seemed to be few and far between, non specific (for example we are sorry for what our founder did to you). Any payments to victims that we heard about were stingy compared to other similar cases.

The Vatican delegate feels that the Legion has been reconciled to the Church. Does that mean for example that the bishops in the U.S. who banned their activities are now ready to welcome the Legion back?

Because the Vatican did not really see the need for an actual reform of the Legion, we expect that it won’t take long for things to go back to normal unless something happens.

Pope Francis has yet to authorize the changes in leadership and constitutions and to accept whatever the Legion claims to be their charism. Once he does this, he will be dragged into the black hole and he will share some of the responsibility for the whole mess. We hope that his advisors will warn him to not give the Legion too much slack unless he is willing to accept whatever criticism comes at him.

The Legion and Regnum Christi members have had an improved opportunity for the last three years to gain access to information about their founder and about their true situation. Many have had opportunities to become aware that they have lived in an environment of isolation, deception, manipulation, excessive behavior control, ignorance of their own organization and its true purposes. Hopefully before the leaders tighten up their hold on the members, some of them might exert pressure from within the ranks to bring about the sort of changes that former members such as Father Deomar de Guedes Vaz gave up hope of ever seeing.

If Pope Francis does send in another Vatican Delegate this time to do a real reform, we hope that he picks someone who speaks Spanish and that he is given a mandate to do a full investigation, that he will interview former members and other critics, victims, cult experts, psychologists and exorcists and make real changes to cure and clean those things that previous Delegates failed to notice.