Archbihop Stanislaw Dziwisz was John paul's closest confidante, a Pole who had had a bedroom in the private quarters of the Apostolic Palace. Maciel (pictured below) spent years cultivating Dsiwisz's support. Under Maciel, the Legion steered streams of money to Dziwisz in his function as gatekeeper for the Pope's private Masses in the Apostolic Palace.
Attending Mass in the small chapel was a rare privilege for the occasional head of state, like British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his family. ''Mass would start at 7am, and there was always someone in attendance: laypeople, or priests, or groups of bishops,'' Dziwisz wrote in a 2008 memoir, A Life With Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship With the Man Who Became Pope.
One of the ex-Legionaries in Rome told NCR that a Mexican family in 1997 gave Dziwisz $50,000 upon attending Mass. ''We arranged things like that,'' he said of his role as go-between. Did John Paul know about the funds? Only Dziwisz would know.
Deserving cause
Given the Pope's ascetic lifestyle and accounts of his charitable giving, the funds could have gone to a deserving cause. Dziwisz's book says nothing of donations and contains no mention of Maciel or the Legion. The priest who arranged for the Mexican family to attend Mass worried, in hindsight, about the frequency with which Legionaries facilitated funds to Dziwisz. (pictured with John Paul II)
''This happened all the time with Dziwisz,'' said a second ex-Legionary, who was informed of the transactions.
Fr Alvaro Corcuera, who would succeed Maciel as director general in 2004, and one or two other Legionaries ''would go up to see Dziwisz on the third floor. They were welcomed. They were known within the household.''
Struggling to give context to the donations, this cleric continued: ''You're saying these laypeople are good and fervent, it's good for them to meet the Pope. The expression is opera carita -- 'We're making an offering for your works of charity'. That's the way it's done. In fact you don't know where the money's going.'' He paused. ''It's an elegant way of giving a bribe.''
Recalling those events, he spoke of what made him leave the Legion. ''I woke up and asked: Am I giving my life to serve God, or one man who had his problems? It was not worth consecrating myself to Maciel.''
What's a bribe?
In terms of legal reality, does ''an elegant way of giving a bribe'' add up to bribery? The money from Maciel was given to heads of congregations in the early 1990s and the newspaper exposure of Maciel did not occur until 1997, and the canon law case in 1998.
Pic: then-Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz with Pope John Paul II
Further, such exchanges are not considered bribes in the view of Nicholas Cafardi, a prominent canon lawyer and the dean emeritus of Duquesne University Law School in Pittsburgh. Cafardi, who has done work as a legal consultant for many bishops, responded to a general question about large donations to priests or Church officials in the Vatican.
Under Church law (canon 1302), a large financial gift to an official in Rome ''would qualify as a pious cause,'' explains Cafardi. He spoke in broad terms, saying that such funds should be reported to the cardinal-vicar for Rome. An expensive gift, like a car, need not be reported.
''That's how I read the law. I know of no exceptions. Cardinals do have to report gifts for pious causes. If funds are given for the official's personal charity, that is not a pious cause and need not be reported.''
''Maciel wanted to buy power,'' said the priest who facilitated the Mexican family's opera carita to Dziwisz. He did not use the word bribery, but in explaining why he left the Legion, morality was at issue. ''It got to a breaking point for me [over] a culture of lying [within the order]. The superiors know they're lying and they know that you know,'' he said. ''They lie about money, where it comes from, where it goes, how it's given.''
Cash envelope
When Martínez Somalo, a Spaniard, became head of the congregation overseeing religious in 1994, Maciel dispatched this priest to Martínez Somalo's home. The young priest carried an envelope thick with cash. ''I didn't bat an eye,'' he recalled. ''I went up to his apartment, handed him the envelope, said goodbye. ... It was a way of making friends, insuring certain help if it were needed, oiling the cogs.''
Glenn Favreau, a Legionary in Rome from 1990 to 1997, and today an attorney in Washington, DC, recalled: ''Martínez Somalo was talked about a lot in the Legion, always in the context of 'our superior' because he was our friend. Un amigo de Legion.'' Favreau, who knew nothing of the donation to Martínez Somalo, continued: ''There were cardinals who weren't amigos. They wouldn't call them enemies, but everyone knew who they were. Pio Laghi did not like the Legion.'' Cardinal Laghi, former papal nuncio to the United States, was then prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education.
Lavished praise
Martínez Somalo's office took a new name: Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. But the job description stayed the same. From 1994 to 2004, the Spanish cardinal's duties included investigating any complaints about religious orders or their leaders.
In the files of that congregation, according to several former Legionaries, sat letters that dated back many years, accusing Maciel of abusing seminarians. When the wrenching accounts of nine seminary-victims of Maciel made news in the 1997 Hartford Courant, Martínez Somalo did nothing. That was the reaction throughout the Roman curia.
John Paul named Martínez Somalo to the post of carmelango, or chamberlain, the official in charge of the conclave when a Pope is elected.
Today, the cardinal in charge of the congregation that oversees religious orders is Franc Rodé. He lavished praise on Maciel, the Legion and its lay wing, Regnum Christi, for years.
One cardinal who rebuffed a Legion financial gift was Joseph Ratzinger.
In 1997 he gave a lecture on theology to Legionaries. When a Legionary handed him an envelope, saying it was for his charitable use, Ratzinger refused. ''He was tough as nails in a very cordial way,'' a witness said.
Modus operandi
Maciel travelled incessantly, drawing funds from Legion centres in Mexico, Rome and the United States. Certain ex-Legionaries with knowledge of the order's finances believe that Maciel constantly drew from Legion coffers to subsidise his families.
For years Maciel had Legion priests dole out envelopes with cash and donate gifts to officials in the curia. In the days leading up to Christmas, Legion seminarians spent hours packaging the baskets with expensive bottles of wine, rare brandy, and cured Spanish hams that alone cost upward of $1,000 each. Priests involved in the gifts and larger cash exchanges say that in hindsight they view Maciel's strategy as akin to an insurance policy, to protect himself should he be exposed and to position the Legion as an elite presence in the workings of the Vatican.
Fichter, the former Legion member, is today pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Haworth, NJ. He has been a diocesan priest for a decade, and serves in the Newark archdiocese. He coordinated the Legion's administrative office in Rome from February 1998 until October 2000.
Never questioned
''When Fr Maciel would leave Rome it was my duty to supply him with $10,000 in cash - $5,000 in American dollars, and the other half in the currency of the country to which he was travelling,'' explained Fichter. ''I would be informed by one of his assistants that he was leaving and I would have to prepare the funds for him. I never questioned that he was not using it for good and noble purposes. It was a routine part of my job. He was so totally above reproach that I felt honoured to have that role. He did not submit any receipts and I would have not dared to ask him for a receipt.''
Fichter was reluctant to be interviewed, expressing concern that his views be fully reflected. ''As Legionaries our norms concerning the use of money were very restricted,'' he began. ''If I went on an outing I was given $20 and if I had a pizza I'd return the $15 to my superior with a receipt. The sad thing is that we were so naive. We were scrupulously trying to live our vow of poverty and yet never questioned [Maciel's] own fidelity to the same.
''So many of my old classmates are still in the Legion and I feel that they are going through such a hard time right now. I don't want to have my words misconstrued . . . Maciel hoodwinked everyone. In hindsight I regret that I and so many others were so gullible. Thankfully, for me that was many years ago.''
Justice delayed
After the ex-Legion victims filed a canonical case in 1998 against Maciel in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sodano (pictured) as secretary of state - essentially, the Vatican prime minister - pressured Ratzinger, as the congregation's prefect, to halt the proceeding. As the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) reported in 2001, José Barba, a college professor in Mexico City and ex-Legionary who filed the 1998 case in Ratzinger's office, learned from the canonist handling the case, Martha Wegan in Rome, of Sodano's role.
''Sodano came over with his entire family, 200 of them, for a big meal when he was named cardinal,'' recalled Favreau. ''And we fed them all. When he became secretary of state there was another celebration. He'd come over for special events, like the groundbreaking with a golden shovel for the House of Higher Studies. And a dinner after that.''
The intervention of a high Vatican official in a tribunal case illustrates the fragile nature of the system, and in the Maciel case, how a guilty man escaped punishment for years.
Donation
''Cardinal Sodano was the cheerleader for the Legion,'' said one of the ex-Legionaries. ''He'd come give a talk at Christmas and they'd give him $10,000.'' Another priest recalled a $5,000 donation to Sodano.
But in December 2004, with John Paul's health deteriorating by the day, Ratzinger broke with Sodano and ordered a canon lawyer on his staff, Msgr Charles Scicluna, to investigate. Two years later, as Benedict, he approved the order that Maciel abandon ministry for a ''life of penitence and prayer''. Maciel had ''more than 20 but less than 100 victims'' an unnamed Vatican official told NCR's John Allen at the time.
The congregation cited Maciel's age in opting against a full trial.
An influential Vatican official told NCR that Sodano insisted on softening the language of the Vatican communiqué -- to praise the Legion and its 60,000-member lay wing, Regnum Christi -- despite the order's nine-year website campaign denouncing the seminary victims. The Legion's damage control rolled into a new phase with its statement that compared Maciel to Christ for refusing to defend himself, and accepting his ''new cross'' with ''tranquility of conscience.''
Maciel left Rome, the scandal seemingly over. Internally, the Legion insisted to its members and followers that Maciel was innocent.
Brainwashed
In 2009, a year after Maciel's death, the Legion disclosed its surprise on discovering that he had a daughter. The news jolted the order and its lay arm, Regnum Christi. Yet in an organisation built on a cult of personality, the long praise from John Paul suggested a legacy of virtue in Maciel. Legion officials scrambled to suppress scepticism.
When Dziwisz became a bishop in 1998, the Legion covered the costs of his reception at its complex in Rome. ''Dziwisz helped the Legion in many ways,'' said a priest who facilitated payments. ''He convinced the Pope to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Legion.''
In a book on Maciel published in Spain, journalist Alfonso Torres Robles recalls an event on January 3, 1991, ''one of the most powerful demonstrations of strength by the Legion . . . at St Peter's Basilica in Rome, when John Paul II ordained 60 Legionaries into the priesthood, in the presence of 7,000 Regnum Christi members from different countries, 15 cardinals, 52 bishops and many millionaire benefactors.''
Maciel had the event filmed and a sequence used in a video the Legion sold until 2006. John Paul was a strategic image in Legion mass mailings and the video shown to potential donors when seminarians accompanied priests to their homes. The Legion no longer circulates the video.
NCR contributor Jason Berry is the author of Lead Us Not into Temptation and co-author, with the late Gerald Renner, of Vows of Silence. Berry's film documentary Vows of Silence explores the saga of the Vatican and Maciel. www.JasonBer ryAuthor.com
