Rhode Island judge releases documents revealing inner workings of Legion of Christ

Documents released Friday by a Rhode Island judge provide a new window into the internal workings of the Legion of Christ, a religious order of priests whose founder was revealed to have sexually abused seminarians and fathered children by at least two women.

The release of the voluminous court records by Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein came within days of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, who ordered an investigation into allegations against Legion founder Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado when Benedict played a powerful role in the Vatican as a cardinal and again in the early years of his papacy.

These documents are expected to shed new light on a scandal Benedict inherited from Pope John Paul II, who was a longtime and loyal supporter of Maciel even after the allegations against him were filed in 1998.

Benedict's trip to Mexico last year ignited a blaze of negative media coverage because of his failure to meet with sexual victims of the late Maciel, and the global reach of the scandal has cast a shadow on Benedict and his papacy.

The documents first surfaced in a suit accusing Legion officials of defrauding a wealthy widow, Gabrielle Mee, of tens of millions of dollars. They remained sealed when Silverstein dismissed the suit against the Legion and Bank of America. He ruled that Mary Lou Dauray, Mee's niece, lacked legal standing to bring suit.

At the time, however, the judge's 39-page ruling detailed questionable fundraising tactics and raised suspicions about the Legion: "The transfer of millions of dollars worth of assets -- through will, trust and gifts -- from a steadfastly spiritual, elderly woman to her trusted but clandestinely dubious spiritual leaders raises a red flag to this court."

The documents were released in response to a petition to Silverstein by the National Catholic Reporter, The Associated Press, The New York Times and the Providence Journal.

The manner in which Maciel and the Legion used their funds as a religious charity is central the fraud allegations in the Rhode Island probate case brought by Dauray, who is seeking to recover the fortune her late aunt handed over to the Legion as a "consecrated woman" in its lay wing, Regnum Christi.

"They used her as a piggy bank," said Bernard Jackvony, Dauray's attorney. "They saw her as an economic engine and used her for $30 million in donations for 16 years. The defrauding of Mrs. Mee looms over this entire case."

Fleet Bank, which later merged with Bank of America, facilitated the Legion's access to the flow of money from Mee and the charitable trust of her late husband, Timothy. According to Jackvony, the bank should have maintained a wall between its duty to administer a trust and the Legion's aggressive action to gain control of the funds.

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