Catholic Legionaries of Christ tries to get over scandals of founder Maciel

How can an order of priests go on serving the Catholic Church and the faithful after revelations that the man who founded it was a fraud who lived a double life as a paedophile, womaniser and drug addict?

That is the dilemma facing the Legionaries of Christ, as the conservative religious order started a six-week meeting on Wednesday to write a new constitution and chart a future course that would put the stain of scandal behind it.

The order, once a darling of the Vatican because it attracted more people to religious vocations and made sizeable financial donations to the church, has been in receivership since 2010.

At that point, the then pope, Benedict, appointed a personal delegate to run it while investigations were carried out and preparations made for upcoming changes.

The order runs private Catholic schools and charitable organisations in 22 countries via its network of some 950 priests and 1,000 seminarians. It operates a Catholic university in Rome and its lay movement, known as Regnum Christi, has around 30,000 members.

Father Marcial Maciel, a Mexican who founded the order in 1941, ran it like a cult rooted in secrecy, according to former Legionaries. Members took a special vow promising never to criticise the founder.