Timeline Of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado - The Monster

Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, is pictured with young Legion of Christ students in this photo believed to be taken in Mexico in the mid- 1940s.  Father Maciel, wearing glasses, is at centre, left. Father Maciel, who died on January 30, 2008, founded the Legionaries of Christ in his native Mexico in 1941. Photo: CNS 

Most say they were fooled by MM. 

Our Lady of La Salette gave plenty of warning ahead of time. Most didn't heed Her warning - MM is the monster spoken of by Our Lady in 1846:

"And the monster will arrive at the end of the nineteenth century or at the latest at the commencement of the twentieth.Afterwards this peace will be disturbed by the monster" Our Lady of La Salette 19 Sept. 1846 (Published by Mélanie 1879) 

"The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their bad life, by their irreverences and their impiety in celebrating the holy mysteries, by love of money, love of honor and of pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity. Yes, the priests are asking for vengeance, and vengeance is suspended over their heads. Woe to the priests and to persons consecrated to God, who by their infidelities and their bad life are crucifying anew my Son! The sins of persons consecrated to God cry out towards Heaven and call for vengeance, and see how vengeance is at their doors, because there is no longer found anyone to implore mercy and forgiveness for the people; there are no longer generous souls, there is no longer anyone worthy to offer the Victim without blemish to the Eternal on behalf of the world." Our Lady of La Salette 19 Sept. 1846 (Published by Mélanie 1879) 

'May those who are at the head of religious communities keep themselves on guard for persons whom they must receive, because the demon will use of all his malice in order to introduce into religious orders persons devoted to sin, for disorders and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread by all the earth.’ Our Lady of La Salette 19 Sept. 1846 (Published by Mélanie 1879)

Timeline of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado:

1920 Marcial Maciel Degollado born in Cotija de la Paza, in state of Michoacan, Mexico.

1938 Maciel expelled from seminary in Mexico City for "misunderstandings," according to Legion history. Maciel entered an American seminary run by Jesuits in Montezuma, New Mexico, that was designed to educate future Mexican priests in a time of persecution against the church in that country. In 1940 he was expelled. Although no official or documented reason has been found, a Jesuit on background allegedly stated: "He was not considered apt for the priesthood...He was not emotionally or psychologically balanced."

1941 Unable to gain admittance to another seminary, Maciel began private lessons under an uncle, Bishop Francisco Arias Gonzalez of Cuernavaca, Mexico.

1941 Maciel founded a religious order with thirteen young followers, which will later be named Legionaries of Christ.

1944 Maciel ordained a priest by his uncle.

1946-48 Maciel raised money to establish Legion seminaries in Mexico, Spain and Rome.

1940’s-50’s Fr. Marcial Maciel sexually molested numerous minor children whom he recruited for the Legionaries of Christ.

1950s Maciel established Colegio Massimo, the House of Major Studies for Legionaries of Christ in Rome.

1956 Maciel was hospitalized in Rome for addiction to the morphine-based drug, Dolantin.

1956 Maciel accused of making sexual advances on youths in the Legionaries’ house in Mexico by an older seminarian and the priest-rector of the Legionaries.

1956 The Vatican prefect for Congregation for the Religious, Cardinal Valerio Valeri, under Pope Pius XII, suspended Maciel from his duties as Director-General. Valeri installed Carmelite priests to oversee the Legionaries of Christ.

1958 Pope Pius XII died and Maciel was re-instated as leader of the Legionaries.

1976 Fr. Juan Vaca, who had been sent to America by Maciel as the Legionaries’ national director, left the religious order and received faculties as a priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island.

1976 Vaca sent a letter in Spanish to Maciel, accusing him of sexually abusing twenty Legionaries’ seminarians. Vaca wrote: “Using the same excuse that you were in pain, you ordered me to remain in your bed. I was not yet thirteen years old; you knew that God had kept me intact until then, pure, without ever having seriously stained the innocence of my infancy, when you, on that night, in the midst of my terrible confusion and anguish, ripped the masculine virginity from me.”

1976 Bishop John R. McGann, ordinary of the Rockville diocese, included Vaca’s letter to Maciel in a dossier of materials sent to the papal nuncio in Washington D.C., seeking action from the Vatican and Pope Paul VI against the Legion founder. The Vatican and its officials did not take any appropriate action in response to this complaint, allowing Maciel to continue in his position of power with unlimited access to children.

1978 Bishop McGann sent the same material including Vaca’s letter accusing Maciel of sexually molesting Vaca and 20 other children to the Vatican via the nunciature in Washington, D.C. Receipt of the materials was acknowledged by the Vatican, with no other action.

1979 Pope John Paul II had Maciel accompany him on his visit to Mexico.

1980 Jose Raul Gonzalez Lara was born in Mexico, the son of Blanca Gutierrez Lara and one “Raul Rivas”, the alias utilized by Fr. Maciel. On information and belief, Maciel used money and property from the Legionaries to support Raul, his mother and other children.

1987 Maciel sexually abused Jose Raul for the first time. He continues to sexually molest Jose Raul for more than a decade.

1989 Juan Vaca having left the priesthood, sent a personal letter to John Paul II, seeking dispensation from his clerical vows and included a history of Maciel’s sexual abuse of him and others and stated that he considered his ordination to the priesthood invalid, as a consequence of Maciel’s coercive tactics and aggressive sexual acts.

1990 Pope John Paul II had Maciel accompany him on his visit to Mexico.

1991 Maciel was also appointed by the Pope to the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the formation of Candidates for the Priesthood in Actual Circumstances.

1991 Maciel was a member of the Interdicasterial Commission for a Just Distribution of Clergy.

1992 Maciel was a member of the IV General Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM)

1993 Maciel was a member of the Synod of Bishops on Consecrated Life and Their Mission in the Church and the World.

1993 Pope John Paul II had Maciel accompany him on his visit to Mexico.

1994 An open letter by Pope John Paul II celebrating Maciel's 50th anniversary as a priest, appeared in major newspapers of Mexico City, as a paid advertisement, celebrating Maciel as "an efficacious guide to youth."

1998 Jose Barba and Arturo Jurado, representing eight ex-Legionaries, engaged canon lawyer Martha Wegan, a licensed practitioner in the Vatican tribunals, who filed a request at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, operated by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, to have Maciel excommunicated for sexual abuse, and violating the sacrament of penance, by absolving them of their "sins."

1999 Martha Wegan, canonist in Rome, wrote to Arturo Jurado, as named complainant in petition at the C.D.F., quoting an under secretary in the office: "'For the time being' the matter is closed."

2002 Jose Barba met with Martha Wegan in Rome. According to Barba, Wegan told him that Cardinal Angelo Sodano blocked and shut down the investigation and proceedings against Fr. Maciel.

2004 Pope John Paul II gave the Legionaries of Christ administrative control of the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem, at a celebration in Rome for Maciel's 60th anniversary as a priest.

2006 The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced that because of Maciel’s age, there would be no trial, but that Maciel with approval of Pope Benedict had been ordered to a “life of prayer and penitence.”

2008 Maciel’s death announced by the Legionaries. Legionaries stated that Maciel went to heaven.

‘Behold the time; the abyss opens. Behold the king of kings of darkness. Behold the beast with his subjects, calling himself the savior of the world. He will raise himself up with pride into the air in order to go even up to heaven.’ Our Lady of La Salette 19 Sept. 1846 (Published by Mélanie 1879)