Legion of Christ
The Legion of Christ is a secretive conservative Roman Catholic religious order established in 1941 in Mexico by Marcial Maciel Delgollado (1920?- ). Like Opus Dei, it is not bound by certain strictures on traditional orders and has occasionally fallen into disfavor with the Vatican but appears to enjoy the favor of Pope John Paul II, possibly in part of its recruitment work for the priesthood.The Legion, which claims several thousand seminarians and priests, takes vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, as well as a promise or so-called fourth vow to never speak anything unflattering of the order and to identify anyone who does. A traditional_Catholicism, it regards itself as a preserved and pure enclave of the church in the face of post-conciliar modernism.
Maciel, expelled from two seminaries before his ordination, founded the order before becoming a priest and was alleged to have sexually abused boys and the drug demerol. He later received an exoneration, but some who exonerated him subsequently reversed their vindication, claiming they had experienced the same abuse and had felt pressured to silence it. At least three formal complaints were made to Rome and met with no response. In approximately 1995, nine accusers began a canonical suit charging Maciel with complicit absolution to conceal his offenses. The church had still declined to act as of early 2004, though some adherents including the alleged victims, began to hope in the wake of events in the significantly public Catholic priests' sex abuse scandal, which led to the fall of at least one bishop who deliberately concealed priests' molestations, that future actions might depart from the Response of the Roman Catholic Church to sex abuse by priests in the 20th century.
As a secret society, the Legion is vulnerable to a certain measure of unfair speculation but also to the corruptive risk of stifling valid criticisms. The order denies the allegations against its founder as attacks by diabolically motivated liars to undermine its mission.