CultNEWS101 Articles: 10/2/2025

[Patrick Ryan]

Documentary,  Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi, Legal,  Community of Jesus,  La Luz del Mundo

OSV News: New Maciel documentary a ‘cathartic’ experience, Legionaries head says

" A new documentary on the life and crimes of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado was another chance for members of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi to confront the truth of their founder’s dark past and the suffering inflicted on innocent victims, said Father John Connor, general director of the congregation.

In a letter to members of Legionaries of Christ published online Sept. 16, Father Connor said he and other Legionaries who watched the HBO docuseries “Marcial Maciel: The Wolf of God,” saw it as “a cathartic experience” that “challenges us to face our history again.”

‘In this humiliation lies a grace’

“In this very humiliation lies a grace,” he wrote. “The Lord frees us from institutional and personal pride by allowing us to inhabit a history marked by contradiction. The memory of our founder’s sins and their impact on the institution he founded is not simply a call to justice and reparation — which are necessary — but also a divine pedagogy that preserves us from the temptation to boast about our works.

The documentary, which premiered on HBO Aug. 14, delved into the history of the founder’s disturbing past, including his abuse of minor seminarians, his addiction to pain medication, as well as his double life with a young woman with whom he fathered children and whom he also sexually abused.

A significant portion of the four-part docuseries also centered on revelations made public in 2024 that Maciel’s crimes were known by the Vatican as far back as the 1950s.

According to the archives of Pope Pius XII, which were opened in 2020, the Vatican was poised to take action against Maciel in 1956 and was planning to remove him from the priesthood. However, upon Pius XII’s death in 1958, Maciel’s allies took advantage of the leadership vacuum to clear his name, The Associated Press reported."

Provincetown  Independent: 14 Ex-Residents Detail Coercion at Orleans Commune

"In his lawsuit filed in federal court on July 16, Oliver Ortolani, 18, described the Community of Jesus (COJ), a religious commune in Rock Harbor with about 200 members, as a group that demanded “absolute obedience,” separated children from their parents, subjected children to forced labor, and broke down its members emotionally using “psychological coercion.”

Jeffrey Robbins, the COJ’s lawyer, has said that Ortolani’s lawsuit is “not only frivolous” but “borderline fraudulent.”

Fourteen other people who spent time at the COJ from its founding in 1970 to as recently as 2018 told the Independent that Ortolani’s characterization of the community is consistent with their experiences there.

“There wasn’t a single thing that I read that I thought was excessive,” said Todd Lynch, 50, who left the COJ in 1997.

“Obedience is the highest virtue, not kindness, not anything — it’s obedience,” said Dianne Wentworth, 77, who left the COJ after 35 years in 2010.

Ortolani claimed in court documents that beginning when he was 11, the COJ’s leaders forced him and other boys in the community to perform unpaid labor in grueling conditions “for almost two years” to help build a performing arts center in Brewster for Arts Empowering Life, a COJ-affiliated nonprofit. The boys often worked six days a week, 9 to 16 hours per day, and were deprived of a proper education, the lawsuit claims.

Ortolani also claimed that he was encouraged not to have contact with his biological parents and was subjected to group sessions designed to shame and humiliate those who broke the rules “to the point where they break down and beg for forgiveness.”

Robbins has said that both Ortolani and his mother signed release forms that clearly affirmed that Ortolani was volunteering his labor, and that his father, Dave Ortolani, was supervising his work at the construction site.

The 14 ex-residents described experiences similar to Ortolani’s, including ritual humiliation, family separation, and a community-wide program of constant labor. Ten of the 14 claimed they were forced to work as children."

BBC: Megachurch leader pleads not guilty to sex trafficking charges

"The leader of Mexico-based evangelical megachurch La Luz del Mundo (Light of the World) has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges in a court in New York.

Naasón Joaquín García, 56, is already serving a 16-year-sentence after he admitted in court in California to sexually abusing girls from his congregation.

In a newly unsealed indictment, prosecutors allege that García, his mother, and four of their associates used the church for sex trafficking women and children to the US.

The accused have denied all the charges, which García's lawyer said was "a rehashing of old, recycled claims that have been made before, scrutinized before, and ultimately debunked and disproven before".

A fundamentalist Christian organisation, La Luz del Mundo was founded in Mexico in 1926 by García's grandfather, Eusebio Joaquín González.

Church followers regard García as "the Apostle of Jesus Christ" and many have remained loyal to him even after he pleaded guilty to abusing underage girls in Los Angeles in 2022.

While its headquarters are in Mexico, the church says it has millions of followers around the world.

Independent membership figures are hard to come by, but its influence is strong in parts of California that have large Hispanic populations, which García often visited before his arrest there in 2019."

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