The Legionaries of Christ they have removed Fernando Martínez, one of those involved in the priesthood, from the priesthood wave of child abuse in Mexico. Through a statement, the congregation reported Monday that Martinez “has lost the clerical status and can no longer exercise priestly ministry,” although they add that “it still belongs to the Legionaries of Christ.”
Martínez, 80, has a long history of accusations of child abuse since the 1970s in up to three educational centers controlled by the congregation in Mexico. Each of the accusations, caused a transfer of school to Martinez. And behind each of the cover-ups was the founder of the order, Martial Maciel, who personally supervised each of the defendant’s movements.
Until May of last year, with the first public complaint of a woman in Mexico, the Legionaries of Christ did not accelerate the internal investigations on Martinez that have resulted in the withdrawal of their clerical status. The complainant, Ana Lucía Salazar, also left on Monday to the passage of the congregation’s decision in a statement to a radio program: “That is not a punishment, Fernando Martínez is 80 years old … He did not retire, he was retired and as anyone will have the benefits. “
Systematic abuses within the order have been recognized by the congregation itself, one of the most powerful in the Catholic Church. An internal investigation revealed late last year that from its foundation in 1941 to the present, 175 minors were victims of sexual crimes committed by 33 priests. At the top of the criminal pyramid is Maciel, who is credited with at least 60 cases of abused children.
The report, which came to light three days after Pope Francis ordered the suppression of the papal secret on ecclesiastical pedophiles, found that pedophilia was a systemic practice embedded within the order and was protected by a cloak of impunity and cover-up, until the point of being a requirement that facilitated obtaining promotions and positions of power.
The eight decades of continued crimes were forming “chains of abuse”, as defined by the report itself. That is to say, in many cases the child victims of abuse became themselves abusers. “It is emblematic that 111 of the abused minors were victims of Maciel, one of their victims or a victim of their victims,” says the report.
One of those cases is that of Fernando Martínez. The internal investigation into his case shows that “Father Maciel abused Father Fernando Martínez in Ontaneda and Rome in summer and autumn of 1954, when he was 15 years old.” After the abuses by the former victim, the systemic pattern of cover-up and sponsorship was in turn fulfilled: “Although he knew that Father Martínez in turn had abused, Father Maciel decided to move him from one place to another.”
Maciel made those decisions even going against Martinez himself, who in the summer of 1991, in the prelude to his transfer as director of the Cumbres de Cancún Institute came to recognize: “Neither physically, nor spiritually, nor morally do I feel firm to accept a responsibility of gender with all recent background. ”
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