Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Archbishop Broglio gets it wrong on Marcial Maciel

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who is archbishop to the US military was elected last month as president of the US Episcopal Conference. 

Broglio worked as chief of cabinet for the late Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who was Vatican secretary of state, from 1990 to 2001. 

Sodano has been widely criticised for stalling investigations into prominent clerics found to be sexual abusers, such as the Fr Marcial Maciel, leader of the Legionaries of Christ.

“Hindsight is always 20/20,” Broglio said at a news conference after his election. “Many things that we’ve learned now perhaps certainly weren’t known then.”

He said that during his tenure, Maciel “had everyone fairly well buffaloed” because he was recruiting so many new priests.

In the mid 1970s it was clear to the writer of this blog, who was a post graduate student in Rome at the time, that there was something terribly wrong with Maciel and his organisation.

There were many people who were asking questions about the Legionaries of Christ for a long time.

It’s too clever by half to talk about hindsight being 20/20.

Maceil had not ‘everyone fairly well buffaloed’ as Broglio states.

Archbishop Broglio's comment is unfortunate.







1 comment:

Michael said...

Broglio’s election as president is a real slap in the face to Catholics, as it is a pointed rejection of Pope Francis. It also indicates how utterly out of touch the USCB are with ordinary Catholics. The culture warriors are in the ascendant. If a “progressive” bishop behaved like Strickland, he would have been removed. It’s very sad.

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