Marcial Maciel Degollado, a priest from Mexico is a walking contradiction. He was the greatest postwar fundraiser for the Catholic Church, and its greatest criminal. Pope Benedict XVI described Degollado as “A life … out of moral bounds,” and a “wasted, twisted life.”

In the 1940’s Degollado founded the religious order, The Legion of Christ. Degollado sexually assaulted teenage seminarians in the order, while moving between Mexico, Venzuela and Spain to win government support for the seminaries after the Spanish Civil War. In the process, he cemented ties between Francisco Franco’s dictatorship and the Catholic hierarchy, shoring up channels for the wealthy elite to spill money into the Order.

The Legionaries were easy to spot in Rome, they were “young men with close-cropped hair in traditional cassocks or double-breasted blazers, walking two by two like a spiritual army.”

The youngest of five boys, Degollado was born into the aristocracy of Cotija de la Paz in south-central Mexico in 1920. He was belittled and ridiculed as a boy, and told one of his seminary victims, Juan Vaca, how he was sexually abused by mule drivers. Juan Vaca was ten when he entered the Legion and at 12 years old, Degollado stated molesting him in Spain.

Vaca later wrote a 12 page singled-space letter to Degollado identifying 20 other  “good and gifted young boys … [subjected to] aberrant and sacrilegious abuse” victims assaulted by Degollado.  Bishop John Raymond McGann included the letter in a dossier to the Vatican but nothing ever came of it. Vaca wrote again when Pope John Paul II became pope but again nothing happened.

Descended from a line of bishops on his mother’s side, Degollado entered the Mexican seminary but was dismissed for unknown reasons. He then joined the Jesuits seminary in Mexico, but was also dismissed for “misunderstandings.” His uncle, Bishop Francisco Arias arranged private lessons for his nephew, and Degollado was ordained in 1944.

In 1956 Degollado spiralled out of control from an addiction to morphine painkillers. A seminarian at the Legion seminary in Rome complained to the Vatican which lead to an investigation, sending Degollado to hospital and removing him as superior general.

In 1980 the priest fathered a son, Raul, by Blanca Gutierrez Lara. She was 22 years old, while Degollado was 60 years of age. He later fathered another son form Lara. Degollado gave Lara a home in Cuernavac and provided financial support to his secret family. He told them he was a CIA agent and an oil agent.

In 1986 he fathered another child from a different woman.

He used the funds from the Legion to pay for his “secret life and shadow families.” Despite Degollado’s many infractions, support for the Legion remained among prominent and powerful people. President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Cassey made million dollar contributions to the Legion for construction of the Legion building in  Cheshire, Connecticut.

Only in 2004, when John Paul was dying, was canon lawyer Charles Scicluna entrusted to investigate the allegations. Pope Benedict banished Degollado to “a life of prayer and penitence,” but the Vatican was mum on the reasoning behind his banishment. According to an unamed official, Degollado had more than 20 but less then 100 victims.

Degollado retired to Florida and moved into a gated community that the Legion had funded in compliance with Rome’s penitential order. He died on 30 January 2008, surrounded by his daughter and her mother.

His son, Raul said he will never forget how the man who was supposed to be his father, sexually abused him throughout his adolescence.

[Source: The Daily Beast]