Christ is My Life: an interview with Father Marcial Maciel, LC, Founder of Regnum Christi and the Legionaries of Christ, by Jesus Colina, Director of the Zenit News Agency.
 Fr Marcial Maciel was born in Cotija de la Paz, Michoacán, on March 10, 1920. As a child he witnessed the persecution unleashed against the Church in Mexico. |
On June 19, 1936, God inspired a 16-year-old Mexican seminarian to establish a new religious order. Although he lacked money and experience, Marcial Maciel answered God's call and founded the Legionaries of Christ, an order that has since spread to 20 countries and has brought forth more than 550 priests and 2,500 seminarians.
A few years later, the young man started Regnum Christi, a movement whose members (most of whom are laypeople) now number in the tens of thousands.
In all, these two dynamic realities have opened dozens of Catholic schools and colleges and established hundreds of centers that promote Catholic family values, train catechists and missionaries, and help the poor, materially and spiritually.
Now 83 and a priest for more than half a century, Fr. Maciel reflects on his life and work in this fascinating interview conducted over many days by Catholic journalist Jesús Colina, founder of the ZENIT News Agency.
Here Fr. Maciel tells of his childhood in Mexico during the bloody anti- Catholic persecutions, his unexpected call to be a priest when he was 14, and the trials he endured while trying to establish the new religious order. He explains the principles that guide the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi in their effort to bring Christ to others.
With disarming sincerity and realism, Fr. Maciel also responds frankly to criticisms that have sometimes been leveled against him and the Legion. Finally, Fr. Maciel reflects on his own experiences in the spiritual life and the priesthood, and relates his vision, full of hope, for the future of the world and the Church.
In our lifetime the Holy Spirit is active in the new religious congregations and movements that have flourished in recent decades. These pages bring you a moving portrait of a founder whose remarkable life reminds us that fidelity to the gospel yields bountiful fruit. Fr. Maciel's reflections on his own life, on the Faith, and on the Church are sure to give you hope, and leave you a better Catholic and a more effective apostle.
SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS® ISBN 1-928832-75-X
Interviewer Jesús Colina is the founder of ZENIT News Agency, with editions in Spanish, French, English, German, and Portuguese. Colina is also the Rome correspondent for a number of French, Spanish, U.S., and Latin American publications.
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