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Like the captive American soldiers brainwashed by Communists in The Manchurian Candidate, a cold war film, the Legionaries bore the psychological scars of Maciel’s tyranny for decades to come. Unlike the movie characters, dozens of ex-Legionaries never forgot what Maciel did to them—nor his confiding that he had permission from Pius XII for his sexual relief. The idea of clergy abuse survivors speaking out lay many years in the future.

In 1972 Maciel sent Father Juan Vaca to Connecticut to guide the Legion’s American operations. In 1976 thirty-nine-year-old Vaca left the Legion and joined the clergy of the Rockville Centre, Long Island, diocese. Vaca wrote Maciel a searing twelve-page letter listing twenty other victims. He also gave the letter to his bishop, John R. McGann.54 Bishop McGann questioned a second ex-Legionary priest in his diocese, Felix Alarcón, who admitted that Maciel abused him, too. McGann sent their statements to the Vatican. Nothing happened. Vaca petitioned the Vatican to take action in 1978, again to no avail. In 1989, having left the priesthood, Vaca sent his original document with an impassioned letter to John Paul II, via Vatican channels. He asked for official dispensation of his vows, arguing that his ordination was invalid; he wanted a church blessing for his civil marriage. In 1993 he got the dispensation but nothing on the allegations.

Vaca’s classmates took years to reconnect and admit among themselves what Maciel had done. A languages professor named Arturo Jurado, after reading Lead Us Not into Temptation, contacted me in 1993 and put me in touch with José Barba. When the Hartford Courant reporter Gerald Renner called to see if I knew much about the secretive religious order in Connecticut, I had sworn statements from eight men. Renner’s call led to a joint assignment.

Our lengthy report on Maciel’s abuse of Legion youths ran in the Courant of February 23, 1997. Refusing to be interviewed, Maciel denied the accusations through a Washington, D.C., law firm, which sent documents by Regnum Christi members accusing Vaca and the others of a conspiracy against Maciel. The conspiracy charge lacked the salient fact of a motive. The Courant published Maciel’s letter reasserting his innocence, praying for his accusers. A website LegionaryFacts.org, and the Legion’s newspaper, the National Catholic Register, defended Maciel, counterattacking the accusers (and journalists). The Vatican refused to answer our calls, not even a “no comment.” But the silence meant no assertion of Maciel’s innocence. Most of the mainstream media ignored the story until the 2002 abuse crisis; however, in Mexico City, the daily La Jornada did a follow-up series and a cable station, Channel 40, ran a documentary interviewing Barba, Vaca, and others. An advertisers’ boycott nearly killed the station.

Ironically, Father Kunze’s computer in the Congregation for the Clergy gave him the first taste of freedom: in 1999 he followed a Google link to the forbidden article and was astounded to read the allegations of men, by name, including “a priest, guidance counselor, professor, engineer and lawyer.”

Some of the men, now in their 50s and 60s, wept during the interviews. All said the events still haunt them.

They said they were coming forward now because Pope John Paul II did not respond to letters from two priests sent through church channels in 1978 and 1989 seeking an investigation, and then praised Maciel in 1994 as “an efficacious guide to youth.”

“The pope has reprimanded Germans for lack of courage during the Nazi era. We are in a similar situation. For years we were silent. Then we tried to reach authorities in the church. This is a statement of conscience,” said Jose de J. Barba Martin, one of the men …

Each one said Maciel was addicted to painkilling drugs despite his being cleared of that accusation in the Vatican investigation.55

The flashback hit Kunze like a gust of freezing wind: in a hotel room near the Legion center in Les Avants, Switzerland, in 1992, Kunze stares