Normally, religious congregations are born of the initiative of a priest or religious who meets a group of people to engage in a particular ministry that the founder or foundress believed to be of divine inspiration and given for the benefit of other people. The case of the Legion of Christ is wholly exceptional. Fr. Maciel gathered together a group of children who became minor seminarians, and who could not be obviously useful to assist him until much later. In this sense, the beginning of the Legion of Christ is absolutely unique.
The canonical approval of a group is the declaration of its recognition as a legal entity, and thus is the official starting time of a new congregation or, rather, the legal recognition of its existance.
In the case of the Legion of Christ, the canonical or nulla osta approval was granted on May 25, 1948 by the then Sacred Congregation for Religious. The Congregation was founded in 1576 with another rather unique name that reveals the nature of its mission, which was to address the issues of religious and secular priests. In 1948, the prefect was Card. Lavitrano, who was succeeded in 1950 by Card. Mícara, Card. Valeri in 1953, Card. Antoniutti in 1963, Card. Tabera in 1973, Card. Pironio in 1975, Card. Hamer in 1984, Card. Martinez Somalo in 1992, and Card. Rode in 2004. Finally a few months ago, Archbishop Joao Braz, former Archbishop of Brasilia, was named the new prefect.
Marcial Maciel argues in his book interview, Christ is My Life (p. 62) that "I know that this process is very slow. The wisdom and experience of two millennia of Church history were applied to determine if, in their final opinion, a form of religious life might receive formal approval or not"... and he later said ... "To wait two years to obtain from the Church her legal approval for the erection of a community is a very short time." This is a debatable claim. for the seven years between the foundation and the approval of the Legion did not differ from the majority of congregations (which a quick Internet search on the history of other congregations clearly shows). Alfredo Torres said that the first legal recognition of the Legion, as an apostolic group joining the minor seminary in his diocese (p. 16 of his book) -- that being the Diocese of Cuernavaca -- was given by Bishop González Arias in 1947 without regard for the prohibition that the Card. Martínez, Archbishop of Mexico, had placed on the fundraising activities of the Legion in his archdiocese.
The fact is that Marcial Maciel began the process to the canonical approval in 1946, led by the Bishop of Cuernavaca from the report of the inspector Oñate October 1945, which concludes with the request for canonical approval (Murray-Conde, p . 149). The same source said Bishop González Arias signed the request on May 15, 1946. According to the correspondence, on May 26th he was in New York, and began his trip across the Atlantic on the 28th and arrived in Madrid on June 1st. He arrived in Rome on the 9th and had an interview with the Pope on June 12, 1946, according to the memories of Bishop Quintero Arce and the same correspondence of the founder, in a letter dated November 27, 2003 cited by same source. According the same source (p. 162), Maciel leaves Rome on either the 15th (Murray-Conde) or June 16th (correspondence), so that in just two days, the report said, the process was set in motion through the recommendation from the Pope that involved also Montini, who supposedly would be responsible for the revision of the constitution (none of this is said in the letters, which has important details). A true miracle.
There is an additional interesting fact: In the book produced for the 50th Anniversary of the Legion, written by former LC priest Fr. Villasana, he speaks about of two interviews with Pius XII, Murray's book, instead, speak of only one. According to his letters, Maciel was in Rome in January 1947, as he says in his letters (15-I-47), visiting cardinals and monsignors and hoping to bring back with him the decree of approval. He says that he met the Pope some Wednesday, but gives no details. Clearly there was no approval at this time.
The founder did not return to Rome until May 1948, apparently coming from Comillas in early May, and he was thus in Rome on May 5th, visiting the Congregation for Religious. With him he took the letters of support from the Jesuit fathers and Baeza Rodrigo, as well as Bishop Di Meglio, the nuncio in Madrid (Murray-Conde, p. 195). The same source says he went from Spain to Mexico in February 1948, to request the letter of Bishop Espino y Silva, the new Bishop of Cuernavaca. Thus, in May, after the political elections in Italy, he came to Rome to arrange the Nihil Obstat and finds a paradox: despite the support of some of the cardinals and the Holy Office, whose Prefect was at the time Cardinal Marchetti, negative reports concerning Fr. Maciel had reached the Congregation for Religious, and he was told that there was no approval, Murray and Conde described this distrust being based on the youth and inexperience of the founder (p. 198). In a letter dated May 12 Maciel says he has seen the Cardinals Tedeschini and Canali and asked them to pray for him, he also speaks of Montini as someone already known. That same day he met the Pope and says he has received the blessing for the apostolate of the Institute, citing by heart a whole paragraph of words of the Pope (which did not speak in Spanish) and saying that he gave a series of blessings and indulgences letters of support from the Pope himself, something even more improbable, and finally, the Pope asked him to get things done through the Prefect Lavitrano, something otherwise quite likely, and perhaps the only thing the Pope said to Fr Maciel. According to the source, unexpectedly, when on May 25 was leaving he happened to finds that the Card. Lavitrano had signed the decree (p. 199). It is suspicious that the decree is dated the same day, but unless you have obtained the copy of the decree you must accept this fact. Another curious fact in no letter correspondence between 20 May and late November 1948, critical months for the Congregation.
In fact, the judgment of Fathers Rodrigo and Baeza changed rapidly, as shown by the documents offered by Fernando González (pp. 103-109). The problem is that allegations of sexual abuse against Maciel made by the Legionaries to the Jesuits had already started at Comillas, but none of that is said in Rodrigo's report.
But the problem did not begin here. In November 1946, as indicated by Fr. Ferreira in a letter from the Congregation of Religious, Fr. Oñate was designated to act as the founder of the fledgling institute. The founder appealed to the Congregation in December 1946, complaining about the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Mexico, saying that the work would thus become shipwrecked, and suggesting that an advisor should be appointed, not a superior general. At this time, favourable reports arrived in Rome from Comillas, like that of Di Meglio. Rome's response was to appoint Fr. Lucio Rodrigo, SJ, assistant to the founder ad nutum Sanctae Sedis. Interestingly this figure is consistently dismissed in the Legion's source material, including the very recent book by P. Alfredo Torres. After a year Rodrigo wrote a report in Latin (which unfortunately Fernando Gonzalez could not read) which can be reconstructed partially from the content of a letter in Spanish from Rodrigo, indicating that Fr. Maciel behaved like a cult leader, that the rules of the Congregation were held to be inspired and yet were contrary to canon law, but said nothing about sexual abuse, rather positively excludes it. (Gonzalez, p. 112-114). Rodrigo, once he learned of the approval, which was communicated to the jesuits of Comillas, wrote to Rome on June 7th, 1948 to stop the canonical process, and he sent a copy to the bishop of Cuernavaca, with the aim of halting Maciel.
There still remains the question of how the Legion could gain approval if at that time, there were only a handful of men, with Alfredo Torres (only a novice) the superior in Mexico, and the founder having no education. One answer is provided in another letter by Rodrigo: "He(Maciel) told me the name of a high dignatary in the Vatican who was given 12.000 USD in stipends and who helped decisively to the achievement of the rescript" (cited in Gonzalez, p. 119) .
Maciel, however, managed to neutralize Rodrigo's criticism through a report from the same Fr. Oñate, Fr. Yagüe (Cistercian of Cóbreces) and the Archbishop of Yucatán, who discredited the accusations of Sergio Ramírez Degollado, the founder's cousin and clerk.
However, so far there was never shown the slightest accusation of sexual abuse against Maciel, although according to the testimony of former legionaries, this had already occurred.
Rodrigo renewed his charges by writing to the Congregation for Religious again in October 1948, prompted by revelations that Maciel himself expressed about the imminent dissolution of the Institute.
In the meantime, with the well known story of the canonical approval (which seems to have been the 12th, not the 13th of June 1948), the canonical erection of the Legion took place in Cuernavaca, and was made before the order to suspend it came from Rome. Obviously the most reasonable explanation for the unusual rush of the founder was his system of spying, which indicates that he knew of the existence of the suspension order and had to rush to allow the canonical erection.
Therefore he traveled to Mexico on June 5th and by the 13th had established the erection. But that will be another story
