A troubled Catholic order, the Legionaries of Christ, has handed
over control of Gateway Academy in Chesterfield to a lay board and
will move its clergy out of St. Louis.
The moves are part of a larger reorganization intended to help
the order survive a storm of controversy over its founder and a
debilitating economic climate.
They also raise the question of
whether Gateway Academy can remain classified as a Catholic
institution, said St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson.
Last spring, Pope Benedict XVI ordered an overhaul of the Legion
after revelations of child abuse by the order's founder, the late
Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado.
Also last year, parents and former school officials of Gateway
met with Carlson to voice complaints that school leaders, including
Legion priests, undermined parental authority.
Those complaining to
the archbishop included the daughter of one of the school's
founders and a former executive director of the school.
There were
no allegations of sexual misdeeds.
The order recently said it was transferring control of the
school's operations to the four lay members of the board, according
to a memo written by Scott Brown, director of operations for the
Legion's Atlanta territory.
"Legionaries will no longer hold positions on the Board of
Directors," Brown wrote.
"Additionally, it will be announced that,
unfortunately, the Legionary and Consecrated residences in St.
Louis will be closed and that the Legionary and Consecrated members
will be reassigned to other communities at the end of the school
year."
Brown wrote that the order would send its clergy to Gateway "on
a semi-monthly basis" for spiritual guidance and would allow the
lay board to use the school facilities next year free of rent.
In an interview with the Post-Dispatch Monday, Carlson said
while he wanted to be supportive of Gateway parents, he would wait
to see what the school looks like after the Legion's departure
before declaring it Catholic.
"It's premature now to say whether we'll work with them or not
work with them, whether they're a Catholic school ... or something
else," Carlson said.
According to a Gateway lay board member, Steve Notestine,
parents pledged at a meeting last week to stick with the school
despite the departure of the founding order.
"The vast majority of parents indicated they'd like to continue
to send their children to Gateway even with a reduced interface,"
Notestine said. "On the basis of that, we've indicated we'll be
open next year for school."
Notestine would not reveal how many parents have pledged to keep
their children at Gateway through the next school year but said the
parents of the 153 students that remain are enthusiastic about
continuing.
The school plans to still use the Legion methodology
and curriculum.
Notestine said the Legion has large communities in Detroit,
Atlanta and Dallas, and that it was likely the clergy recalled from
St. Louis would move to one of those communities.
He said Legion
schools in those cities will likely remain open.
Jim Fair, a spokesman for the Legion, said there are 10 schools
nationwide with a direct Legion affiliation.
"Several of those,"
Fair said, would undergo restructuring similar to Gateway's and
will now be called Legion "client schools."
"The Legion has invested, over time, a huge sum of money in
Gateway to cover operating expenses, and in the current financial
climate, we can't do that anymore," Fair said.
He said it was possible the order would sell the Chesterfield
property, on Wild Horse Creek Road, in the future.
"We're hoping that local lay people will be able to make a go of
it, and we'll do what we can to make that easy for them," he said.
"But at some point, if there's not sufficient interest to hold
school together, we'll have to look at selling the property."
The lay arm of the Legion, called Regnum Christi, ran Gateway
from its founding in 1992 until the Legion itself took control in
2005.
In 2009, though, the Legion closed the high school because it
could not enroll enough students.
Enrollment at the school — now
pre-K through eighth grade — has continued to dwindle.
Maciel formed the Legionaries of Christ in Mexico in 1941.
Today, the order claims 650 priests and 2,500 seminarians in more
than 20 countries and says it operates 162 schools and 15
universities around the world.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI banished Maciel to a "reserved life
of penance and prayer."
Later, Vatican officials acknowledged that
Maciel had fathered at least one child and molested dozens of
seminarians. He died in 2008 at age 87.
The pope ordered an investigation of the Legion in 2009. The
resulting report said Maciel's behavior "has had serious
consequences for the life and structure of the Legion," and
Benedict assigned an outside delegate to take control of the order,
examine its constitution and redefine its structure.
That
examination led to the restructuring affecting Gateway.
Molly Callahan, whose father, Jim Bick, helped found Gateway in
1992 by contributing $2.3 million, sent her children to the school
but became disenchanted with the Legion's priorities.
She said the
Legion was less concerned about education and more about
fundraising and identifying future priests among the students.
Some parents said the order's priests singled out children who
seemed susceptible to the Legion's message for advancement and
rewards, with the intention of replacing the child's loyalty to
parents with a loyalty to the Legion.
Leaders with the Legion
denied the accusations. Carlson at the time told the parents he
would monitor the situation.
Callahan said news that Legion priests will leave St. Louis was
"bittersweet."
"The whole thing was sort of a failure," she said of Gateway.
"I'm looking at this more as prayers answered, not a battle won.
...They've done a lot of damage. And now they're leaving."
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