New cases of abuse at the Legion of Christ: Zero-tolerance is a slogan

Talking the talk about zero-tolerance comes easy for the Legion of Christ because Rome dismisses the need to actually enforce compliance policies.

And it is not only the Legion of Christ. Similar patterns emerge in other orders and dioceses also betting big on zero-tolerance as a catchphrase.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

This year, one case of clergy sexual abuse in Spain and another in Mexico, both from priests associated to the Legion of Christ, offer a painful reminder of how far the Catholic Church is from achieving its stated goals of a “zero-tolerance” policy on clergy sexual abuse.

Marcelino de Andrés and Antonio Cabrera are both Spaniard Catholic priests and both belong to cohorts of the order who went through seminary formation while Marcial Maciel was a key figure in Rome. His position there allowed him to expand his order’s and its supplemental organization, the Regnum Christi’s reach, where both male and female members are able to join and where abuse, sexual and otherwise, has also been reported.

After Maciel’s death in 2008, De Andrés’s career happened mostly in Spain, while Cabrera’s was primarily in Mexico. Cabrera, ordained in 1988, is a bit older than De Andrés, who was ordained in 1996, but their paths followed similar trajectories. Their cases emerge as the Legion attempts to portray itself as less disloyal to Rome than its Spaniard and Peruvian counterparts, Opus Dei and the suppressed Sodalitium of Christian Life.

Despite the new cases, the Legion has been boasting its adherence to a zero-tolerance policy as it happens with too many other orders and dioceses in the Catholic Church ever since the early years of this century.

The accusations against De Andrés and Cabrera are relevant because they come from the cohorts closest to the Legion’s discredited founder, and they emerge after 20 years or so of the Legion and the Catholic Church at large talking about zero-tolerance to clergy sexual abuse.

In De Andrés’s case, the accusations are more relevant, because they contradict a narrative still dominant in Catholic circles about abuse being mostly about the abuse of underaged males. In De Andrés’s case, his victims, those we know so far, were underaged females.

It's impossible to delve into the full history of zero-tolerance policies in the clergy sexual abuse crisis here. Next week’s installment of this series will do so. Suffice it to say, as far as the Legion of Christ is concerned, adherence to that approach has been more about branding and merchandising than a true reform of the way things are done in that organization similar to an order and, more broadly, in certain circles of the Catholic Spanish-speaking world.

It should be kept in mind that in the early responses of the Catholic Church to abuse at the Legion of Christ, when John Paul II was Pope, him and his inner circle used to describe abuse as a malaise derived from same-sex attraction which, granted, some would claim plays a role in Cabrera’s case, but is not relevant in De Andrés’s and many other very heterosexual predators.

It was also, in their understanding, an excuse to attack the Church as an institution, its mission, and its methods, with little or no consideration for the survivors, their families, or the effects on the Catholic Church itself.

A window into that mentality is still available over the Internet, preserved through the Internet Archive available here (open contents in Spanish), where one can access snapshots of the Legion of Christ’s original website, from the early years of this century, attesting to that negationist attitude.

Defending the predator

Back then, the first iteration of the Legion of Christ’s website stated its purpose was to “dispel the calumnies raised against Fr. Maciel by a group of disgruntled former members of the Legion”, as the statement from the then spokesperson of the Legion of Christ in Mexico, Octavio Acevedo, available here in Spanish, states.

Maciel and his order linked the alleged calumnies with attacks on the then Pope "and other members of the Catholic hierarchy" to drill the idea of Maciel being a proxy for attacking John Paul II and the Catholic Church at large. This strategy is illustrated in the screenshot before this paragraph, which shows its content in Spanish.

That page still has a link, no longer active, to a piece published by the late editor and founder of First Things, then a journal, now a website. Richard John Neuhaus, a key player of U.S. Conservative and Catholic circles in the late 20th and early 21st century, championed the English-speaking world defense of Maciel back in 2002. Later, in 2010, First Things acknowledged Neuhaus's mistake.

First Things aptly titled that piece, a retraction of sorts of Neuhaus's, "The cost of Father Maciel", and actually calls the Vatican to enforce stricter measures on predators like Maciel and those who enabled him, most notably, calling out Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

After the avalanche of accusations and testimonies made it impossible for the Legion to stick to its guns about a conspiracy against Maciel, they, as pretty much the rest of the Catholic Church, embraced the idea of a zero-tolerance policy.

These days, as far as the Legion of Christ is concerned, this policy is on permanent display on both their English- and Spanish-language websites. It's also promoted on specialized websites that expressly use the idea of zero-tolerance in their very URLs. The English-language version is available here, while its Spanish-language twin here.

Behind the idea of zero-tolerance is also the carefully constructed notion of a full system set-up to prevent abuse, curated by experts on branding as a combination of strategic image management and reputation repair strategies, not so keen on detail or actual outcomes, but very good when trying to dispel the idea that the Church only talks the talk.

For the De Andrés case, a previous installment of this series (linked after this paragraph) already provided details of the system developed by Praesidium, a U.S.-based consultancy firm, with an affiliate in Santiago de Chile, that offers services to certify Catholic orders, dioceses, and schools trying to prove to their patrons that they are actually walking the walk.

Praesidium must be a rather successful business as its websites enlist some heavyweights of the global Catholic Church, including the Legion of Christ and many other orders, dioceses, and schools, on top of non-Catholic religious organizations.

In Santiago, its leader is a former top official of the Chilean Conference of Catholic Bishops who had to bear the brunt of the series of explosions related to the Karadima case and the public relations nightmare derived from it.

But even in that respect, the two new cases from the Legion of Christ—one of the Catholic heavyweights paying fees to follow Praesidium’s long and winding accreditation process—prove how frail the idea of zero-abuse is.

Not the luck of the draw

Also, will Praesidium at some point put distance between their methods and the Legion of Christ? What failed in both the Highlands School in Madrid and the Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico City? Praesidium or the Legion of Christ?

An unavoidable question for Rome, and the dioceses of Spain and Mexico where the Highlands School and the Universidad Anáhuac are located, is what the canonical consequences will be for the order after these new bouts of this illness. As far as it is possible to tell, none whatsoever, as far as the Catholic Church.

Even with frequent references to a zero-tolerance policy as a principle by the Church at large, and even more so by the Legion of Christ, there are no actual consequences for failure to comply with these goals and principles.

The Legion, filled with publicists and merchandising experts, was actually able to seize the very URL displaying in both English and Spanish their alleged commitment to a zero-tolerance policy, as the websites mentioned in paragraphs above prove.

Putting that issue aside, it should be clear that De Andrés’s and Cabrera’s cases bear way too many common traits to be mere coincidences or, even worse, nothing but oddities, the luck of the draw. New details emerging over the last few days from the Mexican case allow us to better understand the case from Madrid too.

This is hardly a new realization: when dealing with the Legion of Christ it is unavoidable to stress that there are longstanding practices there and that the Catholic Church has been aware of wrongdoing at that “order” even before its foundation.

Back in the 1940s, Maciel got the green light to set up the order, despite being expelled from three Mexican seminaries for forcing his fellow students to engage in sexual intercourse with him. Every time Maciel got expelled, there was a desperate bishop willing to take a chance on him. And even if all four bishops who were willing to give Maciel as many chances as required were his uncles, as the section on Maciel in the story linked after this paragraph explains, his is not the sole case in the Church at large.

What we know so far is not due to the Legion of Christ's willingness to inform. Quite the opposite. We know it because the anger of survivors and former students at the Legion’s schools and colleges fuels a lively exchange of pictures, information, and sometimes gossip about the professional and pastoral careers of the priests in that order. Only a dedicated effort to follow through with the leads allows one to understand why these cases keep happening.

Because of such emotions elicited by the Legion and its leaders, it was possible to have access to a rather limited database from the Legion of Christ itself with the dates of ordination and the status of their priests up until 2012. Despite the obsolescence, the database helps to figure out who are the two newer additions to the hall of shame of clergy sexual abuse in this order of the Catholic Church.

Key curial allies

The database offers some hints about who they are and what explains their prominent and relatively stable roles in the order founded by Marcial Maciel. It also offers constant reminders of how unstable the membership to that order is, as one of its columns is devoted to keep track of those priests who have left the “order”, those who have been laicized by Rome, and those who remain in some sort of canonical limbo.

According to that database, Antonio María Cabrera Cabrera (or Antonio Cabrera, depending on the country he was working in) was ordained on December 24, 1988, in Rome, at the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Philip of Jesus, by Cardinal Jozef Tomko.

Cardinal Tomko was one of Maciel’s key allies in the Roman Curia during John Paul II’s tenure. From 1985 until his retirement in 2001 (at 77), he was the prefect of the then Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples. He held some minor positions up until 2007, when he finally retired. He died in 2022.

A Slovak, he shared with John Paul II and other cardinals in his curia the view, stemming from their experiences behind the “iron curtain,” that any criticism on the Church or the behavior of the priests and bishops was proof of anti-clericalism or, more precisely, anti-Catholicism.

In that respect, it should not surprise that he was the presiding guest to at least one of the “massive” ordinations organized by Maciel in Rome, Mexico, and elsewhere, as a way to display his alleged ability to recruit large numbers of priests.

The day Tomko ordained Cabrera, another 14 members of the Legion of Christ also received their Holy Orders. Two were Irish, five were Mexican, and the remaining seven were all Spaniards.

Less than eight years before Cabrera’s ordination, when John Paul II attended a ceremony at the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Philip of Jesus in Rome, as part of his regular schedule as bishop of Rome, as customary for him, he praised the Legion of Christ.

Although there are translations into Portuguese and Spanish of the original Italian message, there is not one in English. Therefore, what follows is my own translation of a passage that John Paul II said in Spanish, as part of the memory of his then-recent trip (1979) to Mexico, the very first of his papacy:

Having come on a pastoral visit to this parish, whose name so vividly evokes my trip to Mexico a year ago and my pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I cordially greet, in your own language, the parish priest and the Legionary of Christ priests who zealously dedicate themselves to the care of souls in this parish church.

I join in greeting the seminarians of the same congregation of the Legionaries of Christ, hoping that they may joyfully dedicate themselves to a solid preparation for the priesthood, so that they may then be good dispensers of the mysteries of God and servants of their fellow human beings. May the Blessed Virgin help you, beloved children, to respond generously to the gift of your vocation and accompany you to the altar and throughout your lives.

Your presence and that of the other members of the Mexican community in Rome remind me once again of all your compatriots, to whom I reiterate the greeting I addressed in a special televised message these days on the occasion of the first anniversary of my visit. May the Lord and His Most Holy Mother grant that this trip and its memory may bear renewed fruits of faith and authentic ecclesial life in Mexico.

Lord and master

It is unclear at this point if Cabrera was already a seminarian of the Legion of Christ, but what is relevant is John Paul II’s interest in stressing his relationship with that order. Maciel himself, the lord and master of the order, would use messages like that one from late January 1980, as an endorsement of his steering of the Legion, and—more importantly—as an excuse to ask for donations.

A key member of Cabrera’s cohort was Pedro Barrajón Muñoz, a current member of the Legion of Christ council and fellow Spaniard. He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Life (opens content in Spanish) and the Pontifical Academy of Theology named after Aquinas (opens content in Spanish). And even if these academies deal mostly with academic matters, Cabrera has a fellow Spaniard, Legionary, and classmate able to put in a good word for him in high places.

As far as his fellow Spaniard Marcelino de Andrés Núñez, now it is possible to say that he was ordained in 1996. That year’s cohort had 22 priests. There was one Korean, two Chilean, three United States nationals, seven Spaniards, including De Andrés, and the other nine priests were all Mexicans.

It should be noticed that already in 2012 out of those 22 priests, six were out of the order. Three became members of the diocesan clergy in Mexico (two) and the U.S. (one), two were already laicized or secularized. One was Chilean and the other Mexican, and the status of yet another Mexican was unclear. It is reported in this Database that he is “out”, but it is unclear if he remained a priest or not.

The bishop ordaining most of them was none other than the aforementioned Cardinal Angelo Sodano, then secretary of State and Maciel’s most loyal ally in the Wojtylian Curia in Rome.

Sodano was at the top of his game then. John Paul II appointed him to the Secretary of State two years prior, and with such appointment he became the Cardinal Bishop of Albano, one of the most powerful positions in the structure of the College of Cardinals and the Catholic Church at large as there are only a handful of Cardinals who get the title of Cardinal Bishop.

After the election of Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV back in May, there are only twelve Cardinal-Bishops, compared to the 205 current Cardinal Presbyters, and 34 Cardinal Deacons, as reported in this page from Catholic Hierarchy.

The last Maciel’s masterclass in impunity

Ten years after De Andrés's ordination in Rome, he, Cabrera, and other relatively young members of the order were part of the last Maciel’s entourage. He was the Maciel wasting endless hours walking through the air-conditioned hallways of posh malls in Florida, bragging about his impunity.

Surely, he was spending the monies he got from Mexican and U.S. elites gullible enough to buy his stories (real tales) about fighting communism or being a hero of the Cristero War in Mexico in the 1920s, when he was less than 10 years old.

While doing so, De Andrés, Cabrera, and many others in the then younger cohorts of the Legion of Christ were students attending the last Maciel’s masterclass in impunity and the finer aspects of how to corrupt the complex machine that is the Catholic Church.

We know about that not because there has been a credible report about Maciel’s wrongdoing, nor about the kind of support he was able to get in Rome, as we have it about Theodore McCarrick (see the story above).

We know bits and pieces of the interactions of the last Maciel and his disciples, now more than ever following their mentor’s steps, because there is a record of pictures of De Andrés, Cabrera, and others shared over the years in social media by people who had access to Maciel’s inner circle in either Mexico, Spain, or the United States.

There are even op-eds published in Spanish-language media providing details about how Cabrera used to travel to Europe (opens content in Spanish) with his students. He did so in a manner very similar to how Fernando Karadima, the Chilean super predator, used to do with young, underaged, male parishioners from the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Santiago (opens content in Spanish related to Karadima’s trips to Europe).

It was in that circle where the young legionaries learned from the last Maciel that having Sodano and other Cardinals as celebrants for their cohort's ordinations were master PR’s stunts and major successes for Maciel. Sodano, however, only laid hands on 19 of them, as three of the new priests were ordained elsewhere in Chile, Spain, and the United States.

This image also evokes compadrazgo ties, which are informal networks of reciprocal obligation and influence common in Mexico and other Latin American countries, going beyond simple godparenthood and often facilitating corruption.

In Mexican universities, for example, there is a common practice of students seeking “class godfathers” (padrinos de generación), public figures like congressmen, senators, or governors, who attend graduation ceremonies and are acknowledged as such publicly by the college.

In a religious context, the use of such figures is even more powerful, given the theology behind ordination—that of ontological change—and how the presence of these cardinals mirrored the “class godfathers” from Mexico, a practice that, ultimately, formed a key part of Maciel and the Legion’s cultural background.

Sodano's role as the main celebrant for ordinations at the CES (the Center for Superior Studies, named after its Spanish-language acronym) in Rome marked the debut of that location as a church for ordaining its priests. Recently, the CES changed its name to International College and remaining in the Roman complex of the Legion of Christ-Regnum Christi, near the Via Aurelia.

The massive ordinations legitimized Maciel and his order as models to be followed. Rome and John Paul II himself did their best to portray Maciel in such a light, while dismissing the many cues, messages, and formal reports about the abuse at the Legion of Christ going back to the 1950s.

Spiritual muscle

The idea of Maciel as an example was accepted by other founders in Latin America. In Argentina, Carlos Miguel Buela also aimed at such a display of power. Oddly enough, the decision of the Argentine bishops to go into an “ordinations’ strike” of sorts, rejecting Holy Orders being vested upon the members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, backfired.

As a consequence of the Argentine bishops’ decision not to ordain Buela’s disciples, a backlog of ordinations happened. When Buela found in Sodano the helping hand willing to save him from the suppression of his order, he was able to host, on consecutive days, the ordination of 49 members of his order, one day (August 9, 2001) ten received the orders as deacons, and the next day (August 10, 2001), those ten and 39 others ordained previously outside of Argentina, as described by this story in Spanish from La Nación, Argentina’s paper of record.

In the end, Buela had a massive ordination, giving the Argentine predator a chance to follow Maciel’s example to the letter, as Buela boasted about having hosted the largest ordination in Argentine history at the Cathedral of the archdiocese of La Plata.

Just as it happened with Maciel’s order in the 1950s and 1960s, Buela found a way to grease the Roman Curia machine to avoid the suppression requested by all the bishops of the Argentine conference, except Héctor Rubén Aguer, then head of the archdiocese of La Plata.

In both cases, Maciel and Buela's ability to bring in scores of candidates to the priesthood came paired with their ability to entice major leaders of the Church to preside over these massive, gargantuan ceremonies. Wojtylian Rome was willing to authorize and celebrate these displays of 'spiritual muscle,' as they offered chances to display the full catalog of chants, symbols, and liturgical vestments while mobilizing masses.

These massive tours de force were happening despite the already then widespread criticism of the way orders such as the Mexican Legion and the Argentine Institute understood and practiced Catholicism. Once again, it must be stressed that there was evidence of the negative effects of this brand of Catholicism, as confirmed by the ordinations’ strike against the Argentine Institute of Buela or as reflected in the alley fight between Maciel and his fiercest Mexican critic, then archbishop of Monterrey, Cardinal Adolfo Suárez Rivera.

Priestly attrition

As for the Legion, it also elevated the symbolic status of the chapel where the ordinations happened. When facing the worst of the accusations against Maciel, right after John Paul II’s death in 2005, Norberto Rivera Carrera, the Mexican Cardinal went to the same chapel to ordain 27 priests.

Not that the Legion was able to retain them, as already by 2012, nine of them were out of the order, turned into diocesan priests, and another two had left the priesthood for good.

The previous year, 2004, Cardinal Franc Rodé ordained 58 Legionaries at Saint Mary Major, the Roman basilica. It should not surprise that Rodé remained a staunch defender of Maciel and many other predator priests, as the story linked after this paragraph tells.

As that story tells in its section “Trees and fruits,” back in 2010, Rodé was willing to claim Maciel was:

...able to be above his time. He transcended time. He was sovereign, was free, he was not conditioned by the then current opinions. That is why he was one of the few able to avoid the mistakes made after the (Second Vatican) Council. He was able to foresee the dangers and the traps of secularization and to avoid them.

Out of the 58 males Rodé ordained as priests, one came from Brazil, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Venezuela. Two came from Vietnam, three more from Chile, seven from Spain, 15 from the United States, and 26 from Mexico.

However, one should not be fooled by the numbers, the cohort's global outlook, or Rodé’s ability to spin Maciel’s abuse to infinity. Only eight years after that massive ceremony, seven of those 58 were no longer priests, as they had gone through the secularization process for undisclosed reasons. A subset of 13 remained priests but joined a local diocese (five in the United States and another four in Mexico).

Two other members of the Legion were in an 'in-between' situation, usually described in Canon Law jargon as “extra domum,” implying they remain priests and members of the congregation but no longer actually follow the order’s rules.

Putting aside the rather scarce and outdated information available in the database, other details emerging about Cabrera’s and De Andrés’s lives emerge from informal channels, such as Facebook social media groups like Legioleaks. As useful as the information in these groups is, there is always a risk with that kind of information, as it can lack the required accuracy to better understand what has happened in that order.

The Legion of Christ, in this respect, does not help itself. Yes, it has been publishing reports since the past decade, in both English and Spanish. The most recent appeared last April.

However, despite the elegant design of their pages, what they share are more like data crumbles. Their reports prevent any actual assessment of where their priests spent their tours of duty. There is also no way to assess, as one of many possible examples, attrition rates of cohorts formed during Maciel’s leadership compared with those ordained after his death.

Practicing solidarity

In the coming weeks, as the cases evolve (or not) in Spain and in Mexico it will be possible to gather more information. What should be clear at this point for other victims is that this is a good time to come forward and tell their stories.

That is relevant for both the Spaniard victims of De Andrés at the Highlands School in Northern Madrid and the victims of Cabrera at the Universidad Anáhuac in Northwestern Mexico City.

As explored in previous reporting on the crisis at the French Catholic school of Bétharram (see the story linked above), even if perfect conditions to offer a measure of justice to victims don't always exist, new avenues can evolve as a consequence of social and political pressure.

Last week, Camille Rio offered Los Angeles Press a detailed account of how what has made the difference in France for the victims of abuse at Bétharram has been the ability of the survivors to acknowledge the need to come together and support each other; to acknowledge the need to practice solidarity among them, even those who hail from different cultures, where French is not the national language, and who are not acknowledged as victims by the French Catholic Church.

The Legion of Christ, with its sleek websites and carefully crafted “zero-abuse” messaging, provides a prime example of modern Catholic branding. Yet, as the cases of De Andrés and Cabrera painfully illustrate, the effectiveness of these public relations campaigns seems inversely proportional to the concrete consequences faced by survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

Where the branding promises safe spaces, abuse still happens. When the Legion of Christ preaches about compassion and justice, the opposite happens.

A glimpse of accountability

Until Rome develops concrete measures to punish abuse, going beyond the slaps on the wrist, as it did with Maciel, Karadima, and many others, allowing it to enforce genuine accountability, the Church's stated commitment to zero-tolerance remains nothing but empty words.

Back in September 2024, the Peruvian Sodalitium’s sustained attack on Pope Francis. They went as far as to ask the Nation’s Attorney Office to probe the Vatican’s own probe on abuse at that, now suppressed religious “order.”

Their actions offer both a glimpse into how far these orders with sect-like behavior are willing to go, but also an idea of the powers of the sitting Pope to enact financial penalties and actual consequences on individuals, orders and/or dioceses allowing abuse to happen.

Francis set a penalty, a fine of sorts, equivalent to 27,000 USD, to be paid to the Peruvian Catholic Relief Agency, the so-called Cáritas, when issuing the rather uncommon excommunication of Giuliana Caccia and Sebastián Blanco Eguiluz as the story linked after told then.

The decree stands until today as an actual example of the Catholic Church walking the walk when providing itself with the “teeth” to actually enforce a zero-tolerance policy when dealing with abuse.

This is more relevant as it is clear that De Andrés’s and Cabrera’s are not isolated incidents, but painful reminders that the Catholic Church’s long-proclaimed “zero-tolerance” policy remains a promise.

So much so that an old database dating back to 2012 provides more actual information about what has happened in the Legion than the carefully manicured pages of the reports the order has been publishing for the last six years or so.

Even when they offer some actual data on abuse, their information is the same they reported back in 2019, when they admitted 175 minors as victims of members of that order, with 60 of them being victims of Maciel. On that very same page, there is no acknowledgment of any victim who was not a minor, which is hard to believe, to say the least.

And not only in the Legion of Christ. Last week, Los Angeles Press dealt with a case involving the Order of the Pious Schools, a newly appointed Spaniard bishop, and a Mexican survivor whose abuse happened back in the 2000s.

Hernán, as that story identifies him, had to deal with the gaslighting stemming from the Church’s unwillingness to actually enforce its own safeguarding and zero-tolerance policies, which put minors at risk.

As long as influential figures and orders within the Catholic Church can leverage alliances with the local and global political elites and who promote public relations and media strategies to avoid actual consequences, the cycle of abuse and impunity will persist unless some actual change happens.

The real measure of progress will not be found in website boasts or alleged adherence to rather abstract policies prescribed by Praesidium, but in a decisive shift from Rome that ensures perpetrators and negligent institutions face tangible repercussions, finally bringing genuine meaning to the promise of safety for the faithful worldwide.