New York City, N.Y., Mar 31, 2010 / 16:59 pm
Responding to Vatican analyst Sandro Magister’s article on the leadership of the Legion of Christ, two prominent former members of the congregation told CNA on Wednesday that Fr. Luis Garza LC, current Vicar General of the Legion, should be regarded as part of the solution and not the problem.
Fr. Richard Gill and Fr. Thomas Berg, two high profile former Legionaries of Christ now working in the Archdiocese of New York, told CNA that Magister, in his reaction to the Legion of Christ's official admissions concerning Fr. Marcial Maciel's double life, “makes valid points about the likelihood the Holy See will need to remove the current major superiors and appoint a commissioner” in order to make “needed reforms” and “purge the Legion of any taint of the legacy of Maciel.”
“The current superiors,” the priests note, “whether they had prior knowledge of, or were complicit in any way with Maciel's crimes are certainly compromised by their closeness to him and their inability to be honest about, and take corrective steps concerning his scandalous life from the time it became indisputably clear in 2006.”
They note that moving forward for the Legion, “requires new leadership and a new start with a spirituality free from the influence of a man who may in fact be the most seriously disturbed major Catholic figure in the 20th century.”