Vatican to issue statement on sex-abuse case

The Vatican is expected to issue a statement tomorrow concerning its investigation into allegations the Mexican founder of the conservative order Legionaries of Christ sexually abused seminarians decades ago, officials said today.

The officials declined to say what the Vatican’s findings were or what action, if any, it was taking against the Reverend Marcial Maciel.

But they said an official statement was expected tomorrow.

Yesterday, the National Catholic Reporter said on its website that the Vatican had asked Maciel to limit his public activity by not celebrating public Masses or giving lectures or interviews.

The action was taken after the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith concluded its long-running investigation into allegations by former seminarians that the 86-year-old Maciel sexually abused them.

Nine former seminarians accused Maciel in the 1990s of having abused them when they were boys or teenagers during the 1940s to 1960s.

Maciel and the Legionaries have strongly denied the allegations.

“I never engaged in the sort of repulsive behaviour these men accuse me of,” Maciel said in a 2002 statement.

Asked today to comment on the reports of the Vatican action against Maciel, Jay Dunlap, spokesman for the Legionaries in the US, said: “We have nothing to say. We don’t know anything about this.”