Cardinal Sodano in his more 'angelic' guise.

The following is an excerpt from Jason Berry's expose of the Legion of Christ. The National Catholic Reporter is running a two part series detailing Berry's extensive investigation of Maciel and the Legion. It is really important that people take the time to read this series if only to compare Berry's work with what will come from the Vatican's investigation. The part I have extracted focuses on the part Cardinal 'Angelo' Sodano has played in protecting the Legion.

....After the ex-Legion victims filed a canonical case in 1998 against Maciel in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sodano as secretary of state -- essentially, the Vatican prime minister -- pressured Ratzinger, as the congregation's prefect, to halt the proceeding. As NCR reported in 2001, José Barba, a college professor in Mexico City and ex-Legionary who filed the 1998 case in Ratzinger's office, learned from the canonist handling the case, Martha Wegan in Rome, of Sodano's role.

"Sodano came over with his entire family, 200 of them, for a big meal when he was named cardinal," recalled Favreau. "And we fed them all. When he became secretary of state there was another celebration. He'd come over for special events, like the groundbreaking with a golden shovel for the House of Higher Studies. And a dinner after that."

The intervention of a high Vatican official in a tribunal case illustrates the fragile nature of the system, and in the Maciel case, how a guilty man escaped punishment for years.

(This is precisely why I maintain Catholics would be totally stupid to trust this system to fix itself.)

"Cardinal Sodano was the cheerleader for the Legion," said one of the ex-Legionaries. "He'd come give a talk at Christmas and they'd give him $10,000." Another priest recalled a $5,000 donation to Sodano.

But in December 2004, with John Paul's health deteriorating by the day, Ratzinger broke with Sodano and ordered a canon lawyer on his staff, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, to investigate. Two years later, as Benedict, he approved the order that Maciel abandon ministry for a "life of penitence and prayer." Maciel had "more than 20 but less than 100 victims," an unnamed Vatican official told NCR's John Allen at the time.

The congregation cited Maciel's age in opting against a full trial. (I wonder how many other cases were purposely dragged out so this excuse could be used to avoid canonical trials.)

An influential Vatican official told NCR that Sodano insisted on softening the language of the Vatican communiqué -- to praise the Legion and its 60,000-member lay wing, Regnum Christi -- despite the order's nine-year Web site campaign denouncing the seminary victims. The Legion's damage control rolled into a new phase with its statement that compared Maciel to Christ for refusing to defend himself, and accepting his "new cross" with "tranquility of conscience."

Maciel left Rome, the scandal seemingly over. Internally, the Legion insisted to its members and followers that Maciel was innocent.

In 2009, a year after Maciel's death, the Legion disclosed its surprise on discovering that he had a daughter. The news jolted the order and its lay arm, Regnum Christi. Yet in an organization built on a cult of personality, the long praise from John Paul suggested a legacy of virtue in Maciel. Legion officials scrambled to suppress skepticism.

Two Legion priests told NCR in July that seminarians in Rome were still being taught about Maciel's virtuous life. "They are being brainwashed, as if nothing happened," said a Legionary, sitting on a bench near Rome's Tiber River.

Thanks to Sodano's intervention, the order clung to a shaky defense in arguing that the Vatican never specifically said that Maciel abused anyone.

How much Legion officials knew about Maciel's other life -- the daughter with her mother in Madrid and three sons with their mother in Mexico -- is a pivotal issue in the Vatican inquiry underway.

How much money did Maciel use to support his families? How much did he siphon off for other purposes behind the guise of a religious charity?

Behind these questions loom others about money in the Vatican. Are envelopes with thousands of dollars in cash given to cardinals when they say Mass, give talks or have dinner in a religious house mere donations? The Legion of Christ raises money as a charity. How does it record such outlays? Does anyone in the Vatican have access to Legion financial records? (Let's be honest here, this isn't just bribery, it's money laundering. We also need to ask who were Maciel's donors. They all can't be little old ladies he bilked out of their money.)

When Dziwisz became a bishop in 1998, the Legion covered the costs of his reception at its complex in Rome. "Dziwisz helped the Legion in many ways," said a priest who facilitated payments. "He convinced the pope to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Legion."
In a book on Maciel published in Spain, journalist Alfonso Torres Robles calls an event on Jan. 3, 1991, "one of the most powerful demonstrations of strength by the Legion ... at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, when John Paul II ordained 60 Legionaries into the priesthood, in the presence of 7,000 Regnum Christi members from different countries, 15 cardinals, 52 bishops and many millionaire benefactors." One can just imagine the envelopes that exchanged hands.)

Maciel had the event filmed and a sequence used in a video the Legion sold until 2006. John Paul was a strategic image in Legion mass mailings and the video shown to potential donors when seminarians accompanied priests to their homes. The Legion no longer circulates the video.

The Legion has a presence in 23 countries, with dozens of elite prep schools, religious formation houses, and several universities.

Maciel's strategy of buying influence unrolled over five decades.

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First off I want to say that I truly believe Benedict was not a part of the bribery/money laundering thing which seems to be how the Vatican functions. Unfortunately, for what ever reason, he did not have any influence stopping it under JPII, and it still seems to be part and parcel of how the Vatican operates during his pontificate.

In many respects, the Vatican City States operate as a rogue state. It is not really accountable to any other International jurisdiction and it's treated as an independent state with full diplomatic privileges. This is a situation which is ripe for exploitation by unsavory people and criminal syndicates. All one need do is minimal research into the Vatican Bank scandal to understand how this situation has benefited criminal interests.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that senior clerics take bribes and foster criminal enterprises. There is nothing in Canon Law or Vatican City State law to force accountability. Leaving it to their consciences is no strategy at all as can be seen in the case of Sodano, Rode, and a host of others. Need to launder some drug money, well Catholicism offers multiple avenues for such a conundrum. For instance, I still want to know who the five families were who gave Mother Angelica 50+ million dollars to fund the building of her Temple in Alabama, and this after her vision about it in---Columbia. I can think of five Colombian 'families'.

The point is not that Angelica took drug money, she may never have, the point is we don't know and the secrecy and lack of accountability for such kinds of large donations make it very possible she could have, knowingly or not. This situation makes the stance of the USCCB about the potential of Federal Tax rebates being spent on abortion insurance utterly laughable. Who are they to threaten the health care of an entire nation over an accounting issue when they themselves are utterly unaccountable for how they spend the money that hard working lay faithful donate?

How do they do that? With the same in your face chutzpa of Sodano who calls the global abuse crisis engulfing the Vatican 'petty gossip'. Which means in his mind, I guess, he was accepting 'petty' cash from Maciel.

Kudos to Jason Berry and the NCR for this series on Maciel. Maybe it will give the Vatican the heads up that it can't white wash it's own report on the Legion.