Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [97]
After the patriarch’s death, Maciel courted the widow Garza. “My mother gave him jewels and a lot of money,” says Roberta. “He targeted women in Mexico of a certain class who were not allowed to work. I had to fight to go to college. For cultured women who were bored, Maciel offered a sense of purpose.” With Luis a Legion priest and Paulina a consecrated RC woman in Rome, Maciel secured a flow of money from key members of the family. An electrifying speaker, Maciel could work a room of donors like a senator with silk between the fingers. Luis Garza—reserved, dignified, aloof—donated $3 million of his inheritance to the Legion, according to a colleague at the time. Roberta cannot confirm the figure but says it is within her brother’s means.
Luis Garza declined my requests for an interview in e-mail replies.
“One of my brothers hates the Legion more than I do,” explained Roberta, who left the Catholic Church after college. When the Garzas gather at holidays, they use good manners to avoid discussing the Legion.
The eldest sibling, Dionisio Garza Medina—paternal namesake and longtime CEO of Alfa, the business founded by the grandfather—became a Legion benefactor. He told Jose de Cordoba of the Wall Street Journal: “The Legion is the only Mexican multinational in the world of religion.”33 It made business sense for Maciel to appoint thirty-five-year-old Luis Garza as vicar general in 1992. He functioned as the chief financial officer, “responsible for overseeing key areas of logistical governance,” according to a Regnum Christi profile, “often behind a desk, involving constant analysis of numbers and personnel structures and organizations, risks and opportunities.”34
Christopher Kunze found Luis Garza determined, driven, and cold.
“In one of his talks,” says Kunze, “he explained how successful heart surgeons worked. They’d have highly trained people do the prep work on the patients; the surgeon would then come in to do so many procedures a day, close the arteries, and earn all the money. He held that out as an example for the Legion, like a business model. We were supposed to work with leaders in the world, wealthy and powerful people we should convert for Christ.”
In early 1997 Father Garza traveled to various Legion centers, “giving a talk, telling us that some information had been made public about Nuestro Padre in a newspaper,” explains Kunze, “that it was all lies, curiosidad malsana—an unhealthy curiosity. And if anyone should send us a newspaper clipping we should not read it, but put it an envelope and send it immediately to him in Rome.” Kunze was in Mexico City, living in the religious community at the Legion’s Anáhuac University, working with a Regnum Christi center in the vast smoggy metropolis. For months he had been suffering from insomnia and a sadness he felt uncomfortable discussing. The warrior mystique had given way to a loneliness he had never known. In keeping with the internal vows, to avoid slander as moral cancer, Kunze gave little mind to the prohibited article.
“We had no idea what the false accusations were about,” he continues, “except that there had been a conspiracy against Maciel from the early days of the Legion, and we must show our allegiance. We renewed our vows twice a year. They made us sign an agreement that we’d never sue the Legion … I was starting to wonder about all this when Father Maciel called me in Mexico and said there was a job for me with Cardinal Castrillón in the Vatican.”
THE ASCENDANCY OF NUESTRO PADRE
The youngest of five boys, Marcial Maciel Degollado was born on March 10, 1920, into a family of nine children. His hometown, Cotija de la Paz, lies in the southwestern state of Michoacán, which today is a front