WASHINGTON (CNS) Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, died on January 30 at the age of 87 in the United States. Father Alvaro Corcuera, director general of the Legionaries, and members of Regnum Christi, an apostolic Catholic movement associated with the Legionaries, announced on the order’s Web site that Father Maciel had died and that in keeping with his wishes "the funeral will be celebrated in an atmosphere of prayer, in a simple and private manner."
No further information, such as the place he died or cause of death, was made available.
Father Maciel, who founded the Legionaries in his native Mexico in 1941, was notified by the Vatican in 2006 that he could not publicly practice his priestly ministries after the Vatican investigated claims of sexual abuse made by former seminarians of the order.
The Vatican also said it would not begin a canonical process against him because of his age and poor health, calling "the priest to a life reserved to prayer and penance, renouncing any public ministry."
In announcing the decision, a Vatican spokesman also said that, "independently of the person of the founder, the well-deserving apostolate of the Legionaries of Christ and of the association Regnum Christi is recognized with gratitude."
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s decision was approved by Pope Benedict XVI, though it was considered too lenient by Father Maciel’s accusers, now in their 50s and 60s.
In 1997, the late religion reporter Gerald Renner broke the story about allegations against the priest in The Hartford Courant daily newspaper. In a letter to the paper, Father Maciel said: "In all cases they (the accusations) are defamations and falsities with no foundation whatsoever."
The accusations were brought to the doctrinal congregation in 1998. In 2002 Father Maciel issued a public denial. In January 2005, Father Maciel, then 84, declined re-election as superior general of the congregation, citing his age.
Father Maciel, born in a small town in the central Mexican state of Michoacan, came from a distinguished Catholic family with two great-uncles who were Mexican bishops, one of whom, St. Rafael Guizar Valencia, who had been bishop of Vera Cruz, Mexico, was canonized in 2006.
He founded the Legionaries as an underground movement at a time when the Catholic Church was being persecuted in Mexico by an anti-clerical government.
Pupils take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience and must pledge not to criticize their superiors and to report on any dissent within the order.
Father Owen Kearns, a Legionaries of Christ priest who is publisher of the National Catholic Register, once called it a "vow of charity," based on the principle that anyone who has a problem with a superior or his governance should take it up directly with that superior, or with someone higher up, so that communities do not get caught up in an atmosphere of complaining.
The order’s U.S. headquarters are in Orange, Conn. It has about 600 priests and 2,500 seminarians worldwide, including 75 priests in the United States and a seminary and novitiate in Connecticut. The order also operates the University of Sacramento in California, as well as 11 universities in Mexico, Spain, Chile and Italy, and a graduate school of psychology in Virginia.
