Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [111]
decided—bearing in mind Fr. Maciel’s advanced age and his delicate health—to forgo a canonical hearing and to invite the father to a reserved life of penitence and prayer, relinquishing any form of public ministry. The Holy Father approved these decisions. Independently of the person of the Founder, the worthy apostolate of the Legionaries of Christ and of the Association “Regnum Christi” is gratefully recognized.84
As a cardinal, Ratzinger would have laicized an ordinary priest with so many victims. Sodano intervened again, according to a well-placed Vatican official, to soften the punishment and make sure the language praised RC and the Legion, despite the nine-year campaign attacking the victims. The Legion statement had no hint of apology: “Fr. Maciel, with the spirit of obedience to the church that has always characterized him, has accepted this communiqué with faith, complete serenity, and tranquility of conscience … Following the example of Christ, [he] decided not to defend himself.” Comparing a pedophile to Jesus was hubris more inflated than anything in the media circus of celebrities or politicians snared in sex scandals who apologize, pick themselves up, and keep getting airtime. As Maciel, age eighty-six, slouched out of Rome, the Legion took down its website attacks, though for months it maintained the biographical hosannas to the founder, having little else about the Legion to promote.
Money is a mighty force in any religion. The Legionaries had their script with Sodano’s fingerprints: Father Maciel was never tried, the Vatican never stated that he abused anyone. Banking on the illusion of things unsaid, the Legionaries unofficially told people that Maciel had been wrongly accused and would one day be vindicated. As part of its mop-up campaign, the Legion in 2007 sued ReGAIN Network and Paul Lennon for posting the private vows, the constitution, as allegedly stolen intellectual properties, and in a spectacular display of projection, accused the ex-Legionaries of “malicious disinformation.”85 The nuisance suit threw ReGAIN into a fund-raising scramble. Although the constitution still circulated on the Internet, Lennon gave a copy to Legion lawyers and, in order to settle the case, halted the discussion board, the real target of the lawsuit, as it drew ex-supporters, with fresh facts, like steel filings to a magnet. In Rome, Benedict XVI ordered the Legion to abolish the private vows.
Elizabeth Kunze was in her thirteenth year as a Regnum Christi consecrated woman, teaching in Ireland, when Maciel’s health gave out in late January 2008, in Florida. Legionaries took him to a hospital in Miami. A report in Madrid’s El Mundo by Idoia Sota and José M. Vidal reconstructs his final days. Father Corcuera, Maciel’s successor as superior general, gathered in the hospital with several other Legionaries. They wanted Nuestro Padre to make a final confession in keeping with the Catholic faith. He refused so emotionally that one priest reportedly summoned an exorcist, but no ritual took place.
Amid the black emotions of his ebbing life, the women appeared: Norma Hilda Baños and the daughter she had had with Maciel, twenty-three-year-old Normita. “I want to stay with them,” said Maciel. According to the account in El Mundo:
The Legionary priests, alarmed by Maciel’s attitude, called Rome. [Father] Luis Garza knew right away that this was a grave problem. He consulted with the highest authority, Álvaro Corcuera, and then hopped on the first plane to Miami and went directly to the hospital.
[Garza’s] indignation could be read on his face. He faced the once-powerful founder and threatened him: “I will give you two hours to come with us or I will call all the press and the whole world will find out who you really are.” And Maciel let his arm be twisted.86
The priests got Maciel to a Legion house in Jacksonville, Florida; he reportedly grew belligerent when Corcuera tried to anoint him, yelling,