1 Boring Old Man

Abuse Case Offers a View of the Vatican’s Politics
New York Times
By DANIEL J. WAKIN and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
May 2, 2010

The two former Mexican seminarians had gone to the Vatican in 1998 to personally deliver a case recounting decades of sexual abuse by one of the most powerful priests in the Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado. As they left, they ran into the man who would hold Father Maciel’s fate in his hands, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and kissed his ring. The encounter was no accident. Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to meet them, witnesses later said, and their case was soon accepted. But in little more than a year, word emerged that Cardinal Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — halted the inquiry. “It isn’t prudent,” he had told a Mexican bishop, according to two people who later talked to the bishop…

For years, Father Maciel had cultivated powerful allies among the cardinals, through gifts and cash donations, according to reporting by Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter. Mr. Berry is co-author of a book about the order and helped break the story of the priest’s abuses. Chief among these allies was the former Vatican secretary of state and, by office, the most powerful man next to Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, now the dean of the College of Cardinals and an outspoken defender of Benedict. “Until Pope Benedict confronts Sodano’s role in the cover-up of Maciel, I don’t see how he can move beyond the crisis that has engulfed his papacy,” Mr. Berry said. Mr. Berry reported that Cardinal Ratzinger refused an offer of money from the Legionaries. Cardinal Sodano did not respond to written requests for an interview…

Father Maciel’s troubles with the Vatican dated to 1956, when his personal secretary accused him of drug abuse and financial mismanagement; he was suspended for two years during an investigation, after which he was cleared and reinstated in 1959. “From that moment on, he was completely protected by all the high offices of the Vatican,” said Fernando M. González, a sociologist who wrote a book about the Maciel case, based on more than 200 previously undisclosed documents from church archives, that was published in 2006…

That same year, La Jornada in Mexico City published a similar exposé. The following year, eight of the men brought a formal complaint to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Cardinal Ratzinger then led. José Barba Martín, a historian at the prestigious ITAM university in Mexico, was one of them. He said he and another victim, Arturo Jurado, a language teacher, met with the Rev. Gianfranco Girotti, one of Cardinal Ratzinger’s secretaries, on Oct. 17, 1998. They were represented during the meeting by their canon lawyer, Martha Wegan, and a Mexican canon lawyer, the Rev. Antonio Roqueñi.

Mr. Barba said Ms. Wegan and Father Roqueñi outlined the case and hand-delivered a two-page complaint to Father Girotti about the sexual abuses the eight men had suffered, many of them in the 1950s. As they left the building, Mr. Barba said, the group met Cardinal Ratzinger and kissed his ring. They did not discuss the case. Later, Ms. Wegan said the cardinal had wanted to meet them, according to Mr. Barba. By February 1999, the Congregation had officially accepted the case, according to a letter from Ms. Wegan. Father Maciel could not be tried for sexual abuse, because — at the time — the crimes were beyond the statute of limitations. But the Congregation, which policed doctrinal matters, accepted the case on the grounds that he had granted absolution to an accomplice in crime — in this case, meaning his sexual abuse victims — which had no statute of limitations. If found guilty, he could have been excommunicated…

At around the same time as the case was accepted, Father Athié, who had become interested in the matter and was helping Father Maciel’s victims, wrote a letter outlining another abuse charge and gave it to Bishop Carlos Talavera of Mexico, who told him that he had delivered it to Cardinal Ratzinger. In it, Father Athié described the detailed deathbed confession in 1995 of Father Juan Manuel Fernández Amenábar, who had told Father Athié about years of abuse by Father Maciel. In an interview, Father Athié said Bishop Talavera — who has since died — told him that the cardinal had read the letter and decided not to proceed with the case. “Ratzinger said it could not be opened because he was a person very beloved by the pope,” referring to Father Maciel, “and had done a lot of good for the church. He said as well, ‘I am very sorry, but it isn’t prudent,’ ” Father Athié said…

Just before Christmas 1999, Ms. Wegan, the lawyer, wrote to Mr. Barba and Mr. Jurado to say she had “sad news.” She said that she had spoken twice to Father Girotti and that he had told her they had done some research into the matter, but had decided to close the inquiry “for now.” Mr. Barba said that in a later phone conversation with Ms. Wegan, she told him it was better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith. In October 2002, Mr. Barba said he had dinner with Ms. Wegan at a restaurant near her apartment in Rome. She told him, he said, that Cardinal Sodano had pressed Cardinal Ratzinger, who was thought to favor proceeding with a case, to drop the investigation. Ms. Wegan declined several requests to be interviewed…

“It was very clear that Angelo Sodano was going to do everything in his power to protect both Maciel and the Legion of Christ,” said Glenn Favreau, an advocate for ex-Legionaries who was ordained a deacon in the order and worked at its offices in Rome. Mr. Favreau recalls lavish meals at Legion buildings there for Cardinal Sodano and his extended family…

But something changed. In December 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger opened a canonical investigation and sent Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, a Maltese canon lawyer who in 2002 was appointed promoter of justice at the Congregation, to Mexico to question the plaintiffs. On Dec. 8, Cardinal Ratzinger was the guest of honor at a party for German-speaking laity and priests in the Vatican and told Ms. Wegan that he had decided to “get to the bottom” of the allegations, according to her clients…

Within five months of Cardinal Ratzinger’s reopening of the investigation, the Legionaries of Christ in Rome announced that the inquiry was over — based on a fax from Cardinal Sodano’s office. Nevertheless, Father Maciel’s dismissal was announced on May 19, 2006. But it was not until Saturday that the Vatican officially spelled out why:  Father Maciel’s “objectively immoral behavior” included criminal acts “and showed a life devoid of scruples and authentic religious feeling.”

I am not Catholic so it would be hard for me to be the judge here. To my way of thinking, this was as true in 1998 as it was last Saturday: Father Maciel’s “objectively immoral behavior” included criminal acts “and showed a life devoid of scruples and authentic religious feeling.” To be honest, one might expect something like this from Goldman Sachs or the Republican Party, but even non-Catholics hold the Vatican to a higher standard. They are certainly not so forgiving of their Flock as they are of their Shepherds.