Even non-Catholic Mexicans have been asking: Why wasn’t a Mexican given a look when the prelates in Rome decided the new pope had to be a non-European? Does the new Jesuit pope, Francis, realize that from the moment he was selected a no-holds-barred war commenced between him and Rome’s Vatican/Curia?
These are two questions being much heard among many Mexican Catholics, especially those firmly committed, but also among many who merely (try to) go Mass on the 16 Holy Days of Obligation, those who go to Mass only when they are in deep trouble – and even non-Catholics.
An equally pressing question is how Francis will deal with his own order, the Society of Jesus. The election of the first Jesuit pope in 1,300 years was greeted with consternation by some conservative prelates and others who view Jesuits with alarm for their sharp intellectualism, devotion to the poor and abjuration of elevated ecclesiastical position. Yet it’s entirely possible that as a Jesuit himself, Francis will have a better understanding of conditions in the Society than an outsider.
Restlessness abides within the upper ranks of both the Mexican economic and political elite, for as always Church and money matters, undisciplined politics and Mexico’s reputation abroad are well entwined. Guadalajara’s recently replaced cardinal, Juan Sandoval, was investigated semi-energetically by the both the Vatican and the Mexican government in the fall of 2003 for suspected laundering of drug cartel money. His exoneration appeared flabby to many academics and the nation’s more honest lawyers and jurists. Several priests have admitted taking “donations” from cartelistas for their churches, saying they purified the money by doing “good works” with it. Much despised by much of his “flock,“ Sandoval seemed to dote on Jalisco’s spendthrift, seemingly not well-wrapped governor Emilio Gonzalez, whose controversial six-year term just ended. The unpopular relationship between Gonzalez and the Church, and particularly with Sandoval (called “fish-mouth” by many Catholics, especially in rural Jalisco), became a celebrated scandal during a public ceremony in which the inebriated governor gave a 90-million pesos check (of taxpayer money) to the cardinal for a Sandoval/church project. This drunken, obscenity-laced diatribe aimed at opposition politicians and other critics who objected to his reckless, whimsical use of citizens’ money, deep-sixed his fantasy of running for president. Gonzalez was said to be surprised by the resulting lash-back. The audience had laughed as he told his opponents to “Chingan a sus madres, (Go f--k you mothers},” but even his supporters appeared to be laughing at him as he asked the cardinal’s pardon, and repeated his obscenity.But that is merely a local ego-soaring, law-breaking caprice. On a national and world level, the huge Legion of Christ – founded in Mexico by Father Marciel Maciel in 1941 – has ripped off people’s religious faith and generosity, as well as vast sums of money, for nearly seven decades. This was embarrassing not just for Mexico and Mexican Catholics, but for the Vatican and Pope John Paul II. The elaborate and audacious scam was hard to believe for those who long lavished support on the Legion – and still do. Today, it seems as if Mexico’s business and political elite were trying to buy their way into heaven and ended up becoming the biggest marks of that long period; part of a global scandal that included Pope John Paul II, and was completely and publicly revealed in 2010.
Maciel malevolently twisted the lives of hundreds of children by abusing them, and of several women, some of whom bore him children while believing he was a C.I.A. agent. That was the cover Maciel used for being absent for such long periods of time.
Pope John Paul II came to Mexico five times. Three times Maciel was his escort. John Paul was amazed at the wide network of Legion of Christ kindergartens, elementary and high schools and universities Maciel had created. And the pope was quite taken with Maciel’s close contacts with Mexico’s business community – and the huge sums of money that flowed into the Legion’s coffers.
A number of investigations nibbled at the edges of Maciel’s skulduggery over the years, and he was suspended as head of the congregation, 1956-1958, for early allegations of pedophilia. But he was to dodge and/or deflate these threats through friendships he’d made over the years of visiting Rome.
And despite all the evidence – adult men who were abused as young students of Legionaire schools and seminaries, and women coming forth with children he had fathered – the Vatican protected him. As they grew into young men, many of the boys had sent concise reports of what happened to them as children in Maciel’s “care” to the Vatican and the pope. Rome did not act on any of these reports. Then, in 1997, U.S. journalist Jason Berry wrote a summary of several of these tragedies for an unlikely publication, the daily Hartford Courant, in Connecticut, which was picked up by Mexican magazine Contenido.
“Despite the testimony of 30 ex-Legionaires abused by Maciel, the Vatican failed to specify his moral crimes. To mollify followers, the Vatican praised the order ... and the Legion then cast Maciel as falsely accused,” wrote Berry in a September 2009 article for the Courant.
Much occurred under the auspices of Pope John Paul II and his obedient right-hand man, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was to become Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, on the death of Pope John Paul in 2006, ordered Maciel to retire to conduct “a reserved life of prayer and penitence, renouncing every public ministry.”
But while the operation of the Legion of Christ has been taken over by a mostly (but not totally) different cadre of administrators, it still maintains more than 150 prep schools and universities in 22 countries, plus nearly 800 priests and over 1,300 seminarians.
Thus the Vatican and the Curia can be dicey places to locate the will of God, according to one priest who has spent time in Vatican City. Another, a retired cardinal, denied the Curia was a Curia at all, but ten, 12, or more curias. “Each of these dicasteri departments, that we think as sacred congregations, tend to go their own way.” Many of the secretaries who keep these entities running are career bureaucrats who have spent most of their lives in the Holy See – or perhaps abroad in diplomatic posts. Unfortunately, very few have pastoral experience. If they do well, they may become an archbishop. If they continue and do outstanding work they may receive a red hat of a cardinal. But they are rivals, particularly to achieve differing ideas about the nature of the Church.
It is there, say veterans of the Vatican City wars, that a new pope will encounter set-in-concrete concepts that bureaucratic experience – as well as unflinching bureaucratic ways. Pope Francis certainly knows this, as did Benedict, who spent so many years in this environment. But to be a successful leader of world Catholicism, Francis must possess a sharper eye and be a cannier analyst than his predecessors.
This is the first of a two-part series.