RNS Digest
c. 2010 Religion News Service

Pope names new leader of Legionaries of Christ
By Richard Allen

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope Benedict XVI on July 9 appointed the Vatican’s chief financial auditor, Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, to manage the powerful but scandal-scarred Legionaries of Christ order.
The decision comes after an eight-month investigation of the order founded in 1941 by disgraced Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, who died in 2008.

The 74-year-old De Paolis, president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs for the Holy See, will be responsible for reforming the Legionaries’ extensive network of 900 priests and 3,000 seminarians operating in 20 countries.

The order’s affiliated lay movement, Regnum Christi, claims 70,000 lay members in 45 countries.

Controversy around Maciel dates at least as far back as 1997, when nine former Legionaries accused him of sexual abuse decades earlier, while they were studying to become priests.

Maciel was not disciplined during the reign of Pope John Paul II, when the Legion rose to its greatest prominence. But in 2006, under Benedict, the Vatican announced that Maciel had been ordered to lead a “life reserved to prayer and penitence, renouncing all public ministry.”

The Legion continued to honour Maciel in its official literature and to deny the allegations against him until last year. Earlier this year, two Mexican men also stepped forward to claim Maciel was their father.

In April, a Vatican investigation concluded that Maciel had led a “double life” that was “immoral, without scruples or true religious feeling.”

The Legionaries, whose order had been threatened with closure, released a statement Friday welcoming the appointment of De Paolis, promising him “full co-operation.”

Anglicans reject compromise over women bishops
By Al Webb

LONDON (RNS) — The Church of England’s General Synod on Saturday (July 10) rejected a compromise proposal by its top two bishops that would have allowed individual congregations to “opt out” of having women bishops.

The move was an embarrassing setback for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and his chief deputy, Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who had hoped to head off a defection of traditionalists over the issue of women bishops.

Under the archbishops’ plan, congregations that objected to female bishops would be permitted to have a male bishop officiate at key ceremonies where a bishop’s presence is required.

Advocates for women bishops objected to the plan, saying it would create a two-tiered leadership structure that would deem women prelates somehow inadequate.

The controversy over female bishops has dominated the five-day gathering of the General Synod, the church’s national assembly, in York.
The compromise was seen as a last-ditch attempt to avoid a schism that some fear could lead to the defection of perhaps hundreds of traditional Anglican clergy, taking with them thousands of worshippers, to the Roman Catholic Church.

The rejection of the two archbishops’ plan effectively leaves the church on the same path to the eventual consecration of women bishops — but not until 2014 as “the earliest possible time.”

Since 1994, some 5,000 women have been ordained priests in the Church of England. In 2005, church leaders approved, in principle, the idea of women bishops. Work on legislation to codify women bishops began two years ago.


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