Father Marcial Maciel, 87, the controversial founder of a powerful conservative Catholic religious order and the subject of sex abuse allegations, died Wednesday in the United States.
The Mexican-born Father Maciel founded the Legion of Christ, also known as the Legionnaires of Christ, as well as a secular movement known as Regnum Christi. During a time when vocations to the priesthood in the Catholic Church had fallen sharply, the Legion, a favorite of the late Pope John Paul II, was able to attract many young men to its ranks.
The Legion announced Father Maciel's death, of natural causes, on its Web site.
The Legion's conservative outlook is especially popular with wealthy business families in Mexico and throughout Latin America. Under Father Maciel, the Legion founded schools and universities throughout the region, and assumed a major role in Catholic education, especially for the sons and daughters of the wealthy.
Father Maciel, who stepped down as head of the Legion in 2005, was dogged through much of his career by accusations he had sexually abused young seminarians under his care.
In 1997, eight men, all former seminarians and one a priest, went public with the detailed accusations, which Father Maciel denied. In the years that followed, it seemed for many Catholics as if the Church, caught in a growing worldwide sex-abuse scandal, was protecting Father Maciel because of the Legion's power, wealth and influence.
But in 2006, Pope Benedict publicly rebuked Father Maciel, "inviting" him to retire to a life of "prayer and penitence" and forbidding him to say Mass in public. Citing Father Maciel's advanced age and frail health, the Vatican also dropped the canonical process then under way against him.
