{"id":1656,"date":"2009-09-08T17:31:42","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T17:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement.php"},"modified":"2009-09-08T17:31:42","modified_gmt":"2009-09-08T17:31:42","slug":"conservative-catholic-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement","title":{"rendered":"Conservative Catholic Movement Preaches Caution on Founder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) American leaders of a conservative Catholic movement have apologized for their founder&#8217;s sexual misbehavior and ordered followers to cease honoring his memory with portraits or &#8220;inappropriate&#8221; references in official literature.<br \/>\nRegional leaders of Regnum Christi, the lay movement affiliated with the religious order the Legion of Christ, made the statements in a letter addressed to members.<br \/>\nThe letter dealt with fallout from recent revelations that the Legion&#8217;s founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, who died in 2008, had fathered at least one illegitimate child, and from longstanding claims that Maciel had molested boys and young men under his authority.<br \/>\n&#8220;As priests, our hearts go out to all those who have been harmed or scandalized by (Maciel&#8217;s) actions,&#8221; wrote the Rev. Scott Reilly of Atlanta and the Rev. Julio Marti of New York. &#8220;To all we extend a special apology on behalf of the Legion &#8230;&#8221;<br \/>\nReilly and Marti added that Regnum Christi is currently being accredited by a New York-based &#8220;risk management organization&#8221; to ensure adequate protection for minors under its care, and that portraits of Maciel have been removed from its centers.<br \/>\nTheir letter, dated Sept. 1, was posted on the Web site of the Legion-affiliated Zenit news agency, which reported that a similar letter had been sent to Regnum Christi members in Germany.<br \/>\nThe Legion (also known as the Legionaries of Christ) claims to have 800 priests and more than 2,500 seminarians in 21 countries, including the United States. Regnum Christi claims 70,000 lay members in 45 countries.<br \/>\nIn 1997, nine former Legionaries accused Maciel of sexually abusing them decades earlier, when they were studying to become priests under his authority.<br \/>\nIn 2006, the Vatican told Maciel to limit himself to a &#8220;life reserved to prayer and penitence, renouncing all public ministry.&#8221;<br \/>\nReilly and Marti acknowledged that Maciel &#8220;had a relationship with a woman and fathered a child.&#8221; The letter did not exclude the possibility of &#8220;other relationships and other children.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe Legion is currently the subject of a Vatican investigation triggered by the revelations about Maciel.<br \/>\n<em>By Francis X. Rocca<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) American leaders of a conservative Catholic movement have apologized for their founder&#8217;s sexual misbehavior and ordered followers to cease honoring his memory with portraits or &#8220;inappropriate&#8221; references in official literature. Regional leaders of Regnum Christi, the lay movement affiliated with the religious order the Legion of Christ, made the statements in a letter addressed&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Conservative Catholic Movement Preaches Caution on Founder<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conservative Catholic Movement Preaches Caution on Founder\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) American leaders of a conservative Catholic movement have apologized for their founder&#8217;s sexual misbehavior and ordered followers to cease honoring his memory with portraits or &#8220;inappropriate&#8221; references in official literature. 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Regional leaders of Regnum Christi, the lay movement affiliated with the religious order the Legion of Christ, made the statements in a letter addressed&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-09-08T17:31:42+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement","name":"Conservative Catholic Movement Preaches Caution on Founder","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-09-08T17:31:42+00:00","dateModified":"2009-09-08T17:31:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/09\/conservative-catholic-movement#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Conservative Catholic Movement Preaches Caution on Founder"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}