c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-Two national Catholic newspapers sold last year to a group with ties to an obscure priestly order, the Legion of Christ, have moved from California to Connecticut. And the New Haven suburbs have become the U.S. base for the priests, familiarly known as the Legionaries, one of Catholicism’s rapidly growing orders.

Though not directly owned by the Legionaries, an order known for developing lay ministries, the news-oriented National Catholic Register and features-heavy Twin Circle appear to be under their spiritual guidance.

The two right-of-center weeklies, each with a circulation of 20,000, were purchased in mid-1995 from longtime owner Patrick Frawley of Los Angeles and moved to Connecticut in February. Frawley said he sold the papers for $500,000 to Circle Media, which he described as “a group of investors who got together with the Legionaries.”

Although the sale was not announced to readers for six months and ties to the Legionaries have gone unmentioned in the two papers, the acquisition has put the spotlight on publicity-shy priests admired in the Vatican for a highly disciplined, loyalist approach and their order’s reputedly brisk growth rate. The order has doubled in size every decade since it was founded in Mexico in 1941.

Now based in Rome, the Legion of Christ has only 350 priests worldwide. But about 2,300 seminarians are currently enrolled in the estimated 12-year training course that precedes ordination, according to Legion of Christ officials.

The North American provincial office, opened in 1965, oversees 43 priests and 208 seminarians. That office is in the New Haven suburb of Orange, Conn. The newspapers now occupy a Legionaries-owned building in nearby Hamden. A Legionaries seminary is located in Cheshire.

The Rev. Anthony Bannon, the Legionaries’ North American director, said the Legion of Christ is probably best known among religious orders for its “consistent promotion of lay apostolates”-training the laity to do the work of the church.

The two newspapers, Bannon said, are “not organs of the Legion of Christ,” but the Legionaries are “committed to help the papers any way it can to reach their full potential as timely and reliable sources of Catholic news and commentary.”

Jay Schwarz, executive director of Circle Media, wrote in a National Catholic Register editorial Feb. 18 that the newspaper’s only change in content will be an increased emphasis on news.

“The Register’s ecclesial and journalistic philosophy will remain unchanged,” Schwarz said.

Register Editor Joop Koopman said he and Twin Circle Editor Loretta Seyer, were the only employees who relocated from the papers’ high-rise offices in Encino, Calif. Koopman said the Legionaries will provide “spiritual direction” but will not be involved in everyday news and business decisions.

“I think they want to avoid the idea that the newspapers will be a house organ for the Legionaries,” Koopman said.

Russell Shaw, a former press spokesman for the U.S. bishops who now is chief spokesman for the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal order, said the Legionaries impressed him as highly committed priests who are very loyal to Pope John Paul II.

“They are generally well regarded by more orthodox, conservative Catholics and more or less disliked by progressives,” Shaw said.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

Francis X. Maier, who edited the Register for 14 years before leaving in 1993 to direct public relations for the Archdiocese of Denver, was upbeat about the future of the two publications.

“I think the Legionaries probably will be able to take the papers to a new level of competency,” Maier said. “They have a lot of energy.”

The Rev. Brian Wilson of Los Angeles, a Legionaries priest who has been in campus ministry at the California Institute of Technology for more than a decade, countered criticism that the order was overly secretive and more conservative than many in mainstream Catholicism.

“I’m not sure you can put us in liberal or conservative boxes very well,” Wilson said.

“The long time of formation as priests probably helps, but we form our own convictions about things we believe in instead of doing something because the church says you have to do it,” he said.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

There is no disagreement, however, over the order’s remarkable growth.

“No other religious congregation has registered such rapid expansion in recent decades,” according to Inside the Vatican, a conservative Catholic magazine published in Annapolis, Md.

The order operates six seminaries, 80 schools, 98 mission centers, 10 universities and 640 lay training centers in 15 countries, according to Inside the Vatican. The Legionaries’ lay movement, Regnum Christi, now numbers 45,000 members.

One of its declared areas of mission is mass communications. In Los Angeles, Legionaries priest Juan Rivas began in 1987 a weekday, half-hour radio program, “Hombre Nuevo,” now airing on stations in California, Texas, Colorado, Alabama and Georgia, as well as several cities in Mexico and Costa Rica.

The Legion of Christ draws inspiration from its still-active founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, a lean, bespectacled man who established the order while still a 20-year-old seminarian in Mexico City and was aided at times by three uncles who were bishops.

A Legionaries biographical sketch of Maciel tells of how the young priest managed to get an audience with Pope Pius XII in 1946 by standing next to a line of cardinals at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and blurting out his request when the pope neared him. The pope granted the request, and through continued efforts, the Legion of Christ received official canonical status in 1948.

A handsomely illustrated, 50th-anniversary book published by the order in 1991 opens with a poem brimming with optimism about the future role of the Legionaries in church history.

It begins: “Rome. The Eternal City awaits the third millennium. An air of expectation. A time of Advent. In the Church’s womb, stirrings of new life. Among them, a young congregation of priests in continual growth …”

MJP END DART