The Legion of Christ has a new Secretary General. His name is Jaime Rodríguez, a young 35 year old Spaniard. He will be substituting Evaristo Sada, who became the head’s number two man and left his position when the Vatican publicly recognised the immoral acts of the Legion’s founder Marcial Maciel Degollado.
The new Secretary, who was born in Madrid in 1976, was ordained priest just over two years ago. Since 2005, he has collaborated with the directorate general of Rome’s Religious Institute, where he worked as an auxiliary to the Superior Álvaro Corcuera.
His youth and proximity to the director, point to a continuation of the project started by the Legion's current leadership. At least that is what some priests, who would like to see more relevant changes in terms of reform within the Legion. As many know, the Legion is currently in the middle of a deep seated crisis which has resulted from the sex abuse scandals implicating its leader, Maciel.
Jaime Rodríguez studied at Everest College which is located in Madrid; he began his novitiate in 1994 in Salamanca and worked with some youth groups in Valencia for three years, as the man in charge of Club Faro and as a Catholic education professor in Colegio Cumbre, also located in Madrid.
Between 1995 and 2001 he was director of the Santa María del Monte campsite in Burgohondo (Ávila, Spain). He graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Theology from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. Two of his sisters were consecrated in the Regnum Christi, the lay movement which shared the religious institute’s spiritual beliefs.
According to the Constitutions that support life within the Legion of Christ, the Secretary General has no authority of his own: his task is to assist his Superior. In February 2010, the outgoing Secretary was one of the first Legionaries to publicly ask for an apology for the immoral acts committed by Maciel: from the sexual abuse of minors to drug dependence and the reproduction of children with different women. His exit was announced last 31 January, in a letter addressed to all Legionaries and signed by Corcuera.
“I would like to inform you, the letter read, that in January 2005, the end of the six year period for which Fr. Evaristo Sada was appointed, I regarded it necessary, having consulted with the Council, to ask (Fr. Sada, director’s note) to continue to exercise that role until a new Secretary General was appointed the following autumn.”
“Since then, Fr. Evaristo will contribute to the promotion of the “prayer schools” among the Legionaries and members of the Regnum Christi, forming part of the general technical consultation team.”
The substitution was therefore presented as a consequence of the end of the Secretary’s period of office. This situation is similar to that which occurred last August, when the Vicar General in the U.S., Luis Garza Medina, was moved to the position of Territorial Director.
Garza and Sada left in a dignified manner, despite their close links to the Legion’s shameful founder, because they were part of the leaders that had kept the power inherited by Maciel. Garza had been his closest collaborator since 1992, while Sada assumed his position in the General Chapter 2005, when Corcuera gained control of the activity.
This summit has been the subject of discussion many a time inside and outside the Congregation. Some members (but also former members) accuse them of knowing about the Superior’s immoral actions but they themselves have not intervened. They defend themselves saying they had only been certain about “our father’s” “double life” (as they called it) until 2008. They stress that they never believed public complaints which only came to light in 1997.
In a communiqué released on 1 May 2010, the Vatican recognised that its founder had built a “system of power” which basically made him untouchable and that the majority of Legionaries, not all of them, were unaware of what he had been getting up to.
In order to reform the flawed structure that had allowed the abuse to take place, Benedict XVI ordered the Legion to undergo a process of “deep renewal” and recommended Cardinal Velasio De Paolis as delegate.
In recent weeks, an intense debate has taken place following the distribution (in Mexico) of a series of photographs dating back to 2005, which show Maciel in various tourist locations, accompanied by some Legionaries and even one of his lovers, Norma Baños and his biological daughter, Norma Hilda Rivas.
According to the Legion’s staunchest critics, those images prove that its leadership had known for many years about the priest’s “double life”, while the Legionaries tried to justify themselves, claiming that their founder presented those women as benefactresses in public.
During a Mexican television broadcast, some photographs of the final moments of “our father’s” life, which confirm Corcuera and Garza’s relations with the Legion’s founder, were like. They remained close to him on his death bed, by which time they knew for certain that he had committed the crimes he was being accused of.
We will never know whether the superiors knew about Marciel Macial Degollado’s immoral conduct before the punishment bestowed on him by the Vatican’s Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith in May 2006. And all this because the Pontifical delegate Velasio De Paolis did not consider the idea of creating a “commission of truth” to shed some light on one of the greatest scandals in the history of the Church.