10 marzo 1920 - forse 30 gennaio 2008
"Gli uomini che vengono qui non dovrebbero avere visceri." Sigillò la dichiarazione con quel suo sorriso, come se avesse socchiuso la porta della tenebra di cui lui aveva la custodia. Vi sembrava di aver visto qualcosa, ma il sigillo era già stato messo.
Ancora...
"Mi chiamo José Barba-Martín. Ho 65 anni..."
Lettera indirizzata allo Human Rights of Children and Youth Committee of the United Nations, Ginevra, 9 ottobre 2002
Ladies and Gentlemen of this Committee on Human Rights of Children and Youth,
I stand here to render a testimony and to openly lodge a very serious complaint against certain Vatican representatives of the Catholic Church. Many years ago, when I was a young and sincere religious student in Rome, my action would have seemed to me unimaginable and almost sacrilegious.
My name is José Barba-Martín. I am sixty-five. I was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and as a child of almost twelve I entered the religious institution now known as the Legion of Christ which has had its main headquarters in Rome at a short distance from the Vatican since 1950. The congregation has spread to many countries, holds considerable economic power and social prestige, and its founder and general director, the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel, in spite of extremely grave accusations against him, is considered to be a very close associate and friend of His Holiness John Paul II.
I went to Rome for the first time in 1954. During the initial period of my studies at the Collegio Massimo of the Legion of Christ in Via Aurelia, 677, most unfortunately and in a way similar to many of my former fellow-students, I became an object of sexual abuse by the aforementioned Fr. Marcial Maciel. Due to the great secrecy prevalent in our religious community, under the burden of a heavy system of mind control, following many years of spiritual indoctrination, far for my country and family, isolated and out of touch with my surroundings, and deceived by my major superior under the pretext that he suffered an urinary-genital illness and had special privilege from Pope Pius XII to relieve his sexual pains, many of us, innocent foreign adolescents, were repeatedly sexually victimized by Fr. Maciel.
Because each individual remained confused, with strange feelings of personal guilt, thinking his case had been the only one, many of us kept silence about these abuses for decades. In fact, in mid-November 1956 and again in early February 1957, we, as Legion of Christ members, were cross-examined by the two highest representatives of the Carmelites, under the direct orders of His Grace Cardinal Valerio Valeri, at that time Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Religious. Prior to the visitors' arrival, our Legionary superiors with very great subtlety had previously insinuated that the "apostolic visitors" harbored bad intentions against the Legion of Christ. So in spite being under a special oath with our hand raised over a Crucifix, we were inhibited by fear and blinded by previous indoctrination, and therefore lied to the investigators, thus sabotaging that investigation.
Years later, when we recovered psychologically and were able to cast off our still tight internal dependence on Legion superiors, a budding communication among former Legion of Christ members revealed to most of us that the number of the victims of sexual abuse by Fr. Marcial Maciel was very large and spiritually devastating. I must also state that it is impossible that the Fr. Maciel's extensive sexual abuse could have taken place were it not for the cover-up and collaboration of at least some of his close associates in the institution.
I am not here today moved or motivated by the wave of accusations against pedophile and ephebophile clergy in the United States which some irresponsible people say is in fashion these days. Of our own initiative we stepped forward with the media's help back in 1997, thanks particularly to the assistance of two exemplary and dedicated American journalists- Jason Berry and Gerald Renner. Salvador Guerrero and Ciro Gómez-Leyva in Mexico later listened us. Because of these disclosures some high-ranking members of the Mexican Catholic hierarchy bitterly attacked us without offering us a hearing.
So, gradually and for decades -once we became aware of the enormous gravity of this unjust and immoral case- several member of our victims' group have been informing prominent members of the Catholic hierarchy in secret, with restraint and with the utmost discretion. The answer we received was practically always the same- "Leave everything to the better judgment of God".
An ex-priest, former territorial director of the Legion of Christ in the United States, and now psychology teacher at Mercy College in New York City, Professor Juan Vaca, was the first to confront Fr. Marcial Maciel. First in a strong accusatory letter in October 1976, which was followed by a second letter, this time to the Pope in 1983, with the assistance of Monsignor McGann, bishop of Rockville Center, New York. Professor Vaca's testimony was corroborated by Fr. Felix Alarcón, presently an active priest in good standing in the diocese of Naples, Florida, USA.
After a public TV program in Mexico City on May 12th, 1997, we were accused of conspiracy by Fr. Marcial Maciel and by the Legion of Christ official spokesmen. On October 17th 1998 Arturo Jurado Ph.D, a former legionnaire, and myself, as legal mandate holders of the complainant group before the Vatican, together with Fr. Antonio Roqueñi, an ecclesiastical judge, and with our Canon Law attorney, Dr. Martha Wegan, presented our case to Fr. Gianfranco Girotti, subsecretary to Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Prefect for the Sacred Congregation for the Defence of the Doctrine of the Faith. All the charges against Fr. Marcial Maciel were not under the statute of limitations according to Canon Law. We never obtained a receipt for the kilogram and a half of signed and notarized testimonies, documents and papers related to the case. We were never called to be heard. Ten months after the official presentation in Latin of our complaint on February 18th, 1999, and only after great insistence on our part to our lawyer, did we receive a brief letter from her, dated December 24th, 1999. It simply stated that on behalf of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger's under-secretary, that "pro nunc" (in Latin 'for the time being'.) our case was stopped. There was no further explanation of any kind whatsoever. Later, international media have commented on Cardinal Josef Ratzinger's cover-up attitude regarding Fr. Maciel's crimes, and on his harsh response to Brian Ross, as seen on the Barbara Walters' "20/20" program at ABC in New York in May this year.
Sadly we must state: Church representatives sign many accords dealing with the defence of Human Rights here and there in the World. Nevertheless, when it comes to the investigation of truth, to the application of impartial justice, and to the demonstration of real, believable concern for the victims of various kinds of abuse particularly by prominent members of the clergy, the Church prefers to feign blindness, exercises delay without explanation, keeps a wordly strategic silence and only asks forgiveness for Her acts or misdeeds that happened centuries ago against people long gone, in order to distract attention from the live problems at hand. Furthermore, She penalizes good priests who fight for truth and justice for the victims. Cardinal Norberto Ribera, Archbishop of Mexico City, has fired and ostracized Fr. Antonio Roqueñi, a doctor in Canon Law and an ecclesiastical judge, for having guided us to the Vatican in 1998. Fr. Alberto Athié, a Mexican prestigious priest, secretary to the Mexican Episcopate and to the National Conference for Peace and Reconciliation in Chiapas, was also penalized for having supported the testimony of one of our companions.
On December 5th 1994 the Legion of Christ published a letter from the Pope in the seven most important newspapers in Mexico City. In it He praised Marcial Maciel as "a model for youth according to Christ´s teachings" Eight of us, Fr. Marcial Maciel´s former victims, published an open letter His Holiness in January 1998, and we delivered it duly signed in the original to His nuncio in Mexico City. We never received an answer. Previously, in February 1995 we had send another letter to his Grace, Cardinal Cahil Daly, the primate of Ireland. After some journalists´s investigation he acknowledged having received it. We never got an answer. But his Grace had said at the BBC TV in London on January 1st of the same year that he would never tolerate sex abuser clergy in his spiritual territories. And the Church had filled the World with declarations: Since June 1993 archbishop William Keeler, the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, declared that the Pope "has taken to his own heart our concern for both the victims of the abuse by priests" etc. And added: "We will indeed use the means at our disposal to reverse this scandal". (...) And the Pope himself, in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis splendor of August 6th, 1993, reminds all that "The negative precepts of Natural Law have a universal validity: oblige all and each one, always and at every circumstance. It is a matter, indeed,of commandments that prohibit certain actions semper et pro semper (always without exception). Infringing these precepts that are constraining to each and everyone is forbidden to each one and always, no matter how difficult its practise may be: Not to offend anyone, and above all not to stain in oneself the personal dignity that is common to us all". And continues: "So that the splendor of moral truth be not darken in the behaviour and in the mentality of the people in society. In such a way that not only in the civil society but also within the Church communities there would be no danger of falling into the most dangerous crisis that can affect man: the confusion of good and evil, which makes it impossible to construct and save the moral order among the individuals and in the communities." After that the world has been recently the witness to the revelations made by the open media in spite of the obvious resistance and staunch cover-up tactics of the majority of the high hierarchy churchmen involved in the scandals of sex abuse of religious women in Africa, and of minors in Australia, the USA, Mexico, by members of the higher and lower clergy, etc.
I regrettably must add that in Fr. Marcial Maciel´s case the matter has been not only sex abuse of minors, but also (we have plenty of witnesses) the bad example of a long addiction to morphine known to many of us, and an inveterate and varied habit of lyeing and deception. He is a powerful master of deceit.
My former companions and I here follow, in a certain way, the request of Socrates in his Apology: "For if it is true that I have corrupted the youth, that I have corrupted some, then those who already have grown up and who have concluded that I gave them bad examples or bad advice when they were young, then they have the right to step forward and publicly point at me now" (Apology, according to Plato).
I regret that so many hopes and clean remembrances of ours were broken when we discovered Fr. Marcial Maciel´s double life and his real personality. If he were as we originally had thought he was, we certainly would have been loyal to him. What I personally regret most is that he, the leader to whom I had entrusted the guidance of my spiritual growth and salvation has been precisely the man who most has destroyed my faith in the Church.
But the age-old dual, ambivalent nature of the Catholic Church, that simultaneously mixes with Humanity as an embodiment of religious salvation and at the same time selectively encloses Herself within the citadel of her sovereignty as a civil state, allows Her to turn 'crime' into 'sin' at Her own discretion. And by this mere act of conceptual transubstantiation She alienates people from their capacity and right to pursue justice within Her realm, in spite of the much acclaimed and predicated protective virtues of Her own Canon Law. By means of this transubstantiation, the Church empowers Herself enormously vis-á-vis common men and women, and we, as citizens, from no matter what country, get proportionately diminished and loose ineluctably and irretrievably in our lives.
So, under the belief in the perennial values of the Church and in spite of the repeated proclamation of Her Defence of Human Rights, we as Catholics have entered the Twenty First Century still under a disadvantageous Canon Law system that in many vital aspects keeps us still in the Middle Ages. Or should the blame be placed not on Her legal system but rather on Her unjust sense of discretionality in the application of Her Law? And does not this breaking of a fair, impartial, universal application of the Law deny and destroy the true nature of Law itself? World states should review their concordats signed in agreement with the Church as long as She refuses to deal with and to correct criminal cases of impunity within Her institutions and ranks. If you, ladies and gentlemen, members of this Committee of the United Nations on Human Rights of Children and Youth, dispassionately and tenaciously investigate it, you will find the following: that Fr. Marcial Maciel's case vis-à-vis the Pope and the Vatican at large is a touchstone of the credibility and good faith of the Church in matters related to the pandemic sexual abuse problem within Her institutions and ranks.
If you, ladies and gentlemen of this committee, and truly capable and responsible people search deep beyond the external charismatic image of Fr. Marcial Maciel and of the Legion of Christ, you will find, as in John Gresham´s novel "The Firm", that "The firm, behind its attractive facade, hides a terrorific truth."
Thanks for your patience and attention.
L'ultima dichiarazione dei Legionari di Cristo (dal sito ufficiale), a conclusione dell'indagine disposta dal Vaticano:
25 marzo 2010. Dio, nei suoi misteriosi disegni, ha scelto P. Maciel come strumento per fondare la Legione di Cristo e il Movimento Regnum Christi, e ringraziamo Dio per il bene che ha compiuto. Allo stesso tempo accettiamo con dolore che davanti alla gravità delle sue mancanze, non possiamo guardare alla sua persona come modello di vita cristiana o sacerdotale. Ispirandoci all’esempio di Cristo che condanna il peccato ma cerca di salvare il peccatore e convinti del significato e della bellezza del perdono, raccomandiamo il nostro fondatore all’amore misericordioso di Dio. Ringraziamo i cinque visitatori apostolici, Mons. Ricardo Blázquez, Mons. Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap., Mons. Ricardo Ezzatti, SDB, Mons. Giuseppe Versaldi e Mons. Ricardo Watty, MSSp per tutto il lavoro che hanno realizzato con tanta dedizione e sollecitudine paterna. Accoglieremo con obbedienza filiale le indicazioni e le raccomandazioni del Santo Padre frutto della Visita Apostolica e ci impegniamo a metterle in pratica.
Camillo Langone - enogastronomo, esteta lombardo, simpa e Michetta d'argento 2007 - sui Legionari di Cristo:
"La sorpresa più bella del mio viaggio tra i movimenti nella rete (…) Oggi non mi sembra ci sia nulla di più felicemente cattolico romano dei Legionari di Cristo." (Alla scoperta dell’altra Facebook dei movimenti cattolici, Il Foglio, 6 dicembre 2008)
Vows of Silence (2008), documentario di Jason Berry
Sei anni di inchiesta, centinaia di interviste. (Roma Film Festival 2009). Tratto dal libro: Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II(2004), di Jason Berry e Gerald Renner
(edizione italiana: I legionari di Cristo. Abusi di potere nel papato di Giovanni Paolo II, Fazi 2006)
Risorse:
regainnetwork.org
Legionariesofchrist.org
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