During the six years of my ministry at the Chinese Martyrs’ Church in Toronto, there were altogether 3 young people from the parish who had joined the Legion of Christ as consecrated members while some other parishioners also joined the congregation’s lay order, Regnum Christi.

The congregation was founded by a seminarian, Marcial Maciel, in Mexico in 1941. Maciel was ordained in 1944. Now the Congregation has its presence in twenty countries, with more than 700 priests, 1,300 seminarians and 70,000 lay members.

Fr. Maciel died on 30 January 2008 at the age of 87. A few years before that, in 2005, following allegations that he had sexually abused young children the Vatican prohibited Fr. Maciel from taking part in public ministry..

In February this year, a 20-year-old lady made an open statement that Maciel was her natural father. Afterwards, the Legionaries’ leadership made a public apology.

We are in no way sure about the truthfulness of this incident, but it must have caused certain impact on people within and outside the Church.

Nevertheless, Austin Russ, chairman of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institutes (C-FAM) in the U.S. looked at the issue this way: Though the founder has engaged in questionable activities, his behaviour should not prevent other members from adhering to the spiritual practice of the congregation to be good and reform themselves.

The main elements of the spiritual practice of the Congregation are as follows: (1) To love Christ – with the aid of the Gospel, the Crucifix and the Eucharist, we are able to know more deeply about Christ; (2) To be filial and love the Holy Mother – to imitate her faith, hope, love, obedience and humility; and (3) To be loyal to the Church and love the Holy Father.

The constitution of the congregation is a guideline to achieving holiness for every member. The founder might have deviated from it, betraying the Gospel and morality, but that should not affect the effectiveness of the tool that God has bestowed on the congregation to help members achieve holiness. Instead, this situation proves that God is indeed the reason behind the success of the group.

May all of us keep praying for this new congregation. We pray that every member may gain some insights from the failure of the founder because, after all, the one we should follow in our lives is Jesus.