You bet the US Cardinals know something. And Paul Shanley, the NAMBLA founder, knows a whole lot more. Like I said before, Shanley probably has a black book with all the names of NAMBLA charter members, including a Cardinal or five or six.
The men who have come forward with allegations against Maciel all sounded very credible to me. They were taken to Maciel's seminary as very young boys of ten or eleven. One told in graphic detail of Maciel's advances. He claims that Maciel made him bring the newest boys to his private quarters for sexual initiation rites. If this is true,--the way the Pope hugs and kisses and honors and favors Maciel-- I may be joining that long line of people going over to the Orthodox Church.
In the last decade hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by clergy have made headlines in Australia, Canada, and Europe. The media tend to separate the coverage of such stories from Pope John Paul II. The pope who performed so brilliantly on the geopolitical stage as a catalyst in the fall of Soviet communism and showed rare atonement in reaching out to Jews cannot, so the logic goes, be responsible for every priest.
But when the trail of accusations leads right into the Vatican, the obsession with secrecy and coverup is thrown into high relief.
In 1998 eight former members of the Legion of Christ religious order filed a petition in a Vatican canon law court at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They sought prosecution of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Legion's founder. The accusers included a priest retired in Spain and eight Mexicans, among them a professor of Latin American studies with a doctorate from Harvard, a professor of languages, a lawyer, an engineer, a college guidance counselor, a rancher, and a schoolteacher. A ninth man, a former university president and native Spaniard, dictated his own incriminating statement before his death years earlier. The men alleged that Maciel sexually abused them as seminarians in Spain and Rome in the 1950s and '60s. Maciel refused to be interviewed but denied the accusations in written statements.
The first accusation was made by one of the men before he left the priesthood, in a letter sent to the pope by diplomatic pouch in 1978. He received no reply. The Spanish priest also wrote Pope John Paul II with his own accusations. Again, Rome took no action.
The Vatican refuses to comment about Maciel. The pope, however, has showered him with praise as ''an efficacious guide to youth'' and, a year after the first news report, named him to a synod of bishops. In 1999 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger dismissed the canon law petition, giving no reason for his action.
Last year Ratzinger issued new rules to bishops ordering immediate investigations when priests are accused, saying that the Vatican will try such priests in secret trials if necessary.
Why is that hard to believe?
Jason Berry is the author of five books, including ``Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children.''
This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 2/3/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.