Catholic Papers Sold to Investors
Two national Catholic newspapers published in Encino moved this week to Connecticut offices owned by the Legionaries of Christ, a rapidly growing but little-known priestly order that was involved in the sale of the weeklies last year.
But the new owners of the National Catholic Register and Twin Circle have declined to spell out the relationship between the publications and the tight-knit religious order that some term “mysterious” in its dealings with outsiders.
The international order, which has doubled in size every 10 years since it was founded in 1941, has made a practice of acquiring and launching media ministries--yet Legionaries officials rarely provide information on the group to other news media.
Officially, the new owner of the Register and Twin Circle is Circle Media Inc., a nonprofit corporation in New York. But the purchase was negotiated last summer with help from Father Anthony Bannon, the top Legionaries administrator in the United States, leading to speculation that Legionaries will be at the helm.
Former owner Patrick Frawley said last week that he sold the 20,000-circulation papers for $500,000 to “a group of investors who got together with the Legionaries.” Frawley, owner of a chain of centers for treatment of alcohol and other addictions, said he favored the Legionaries as a buyer because the religious order “has a similar interest in treatments to change addictive habits.”
In an interview last week, Circle Media Director Jay Schwarz said the move to Connecticut “has nothing to do with the Legionaries. The rent is very high in Los Angeles, and over 80% of our readers live in the New York and New England area. We hope to be in New York City in a few years, which won’t be expensive if someone donates space to us.”
The new offices will be in the New Haven area and within a 20-mile radius of the Legionaries’ U.S. headquarters in Orange, Conn., and its U.S. seminary in Cheshire, Conn.
Loretta Seyer, editor of the family features-oriented Twin Circle, said she believes the Legionaries “want to consolidate us back East. . . . Economically, it makes more sense for them to put us there.”
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Seyer and Joop Koopman, editor of the Register, indicated in interviews that they are only able to describe the order’s relationship to Circle Media in general terms.
“We understand that the Legionaries will provide spiritual direction to Circle Media, but won’t be involved in the day-to-day editorial and business decision making,” Koopman said. “I think they want to avoid the idea that the newspapers will be a house organ for the Legionaries.”
Only Seyer and Koopman made the move to New Haven. Fifteen other employees at the high-rise office on Ventura Boulevard left or were fired, a spokesman said. Gabriel Meyer, who writes for both papers, will remain in Los Angeles.
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In an announcement in the National Catholic Register last month, Schwarz told readers that the sale of the papers “was not made with a view to any significant change in editorial content.” He said the Register intends to expand its lineup of writers and cut delivery time to subscribers in order to provide breaking news and an “up-to-date and accurate view of the church” while remaining a loyal ally of papal teachings.
Rome appears to hold the Legionaries in high esteem--not only because the group’s rapid growth contrasts with the declining numbers of most other religious orders, but also because its traditional church outlook and support for the authority of the hierarchy matches the atmosphere in the Vatican, observers said.
The Vatican granted the Legionaries’ new university in Rome, Regina Apostolorum, the coveted status of Athenaeum in unusually short time, according to the Rome-based magazine Inside the Vatican. The magazine said last year that the order operates six seminaries, 10 universities and 640 lay training centers in 15 countries.
Founded by then-seminarian Marcial Maciel in Mexico City, the Legionaries are unusual among priestly orders for giving seminarians a dozen years or more of education and work experience before ordaining them as priests. To become a diocesan priest, a man needs only four to six years of seminary training.
As a result, the priests are greatly outnumbered by seminarians, who are called “brothers.” The order now has 43 priests and 208 seminarians in North America and about 350 priests and 2,300 seminarians worldwide, said Brother John Curran, a secretary at the U.S. provincial office in Connecticut. The current total of 2,650 priests and seminarians is about 650 above the total in 1991.
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A Legionary of Christ priest was invited to Southern California in 1984 to assist in programming for the short-lived attempt by millionaire Harry John of the Milwaukee-based DeRance Foundation to produce a Catholic-oriented “Hearts of the Nation” television program at a UHF station in Ontario.
The station was sold in 1986, after millions of dollars were spent trying to build the base for a Catholic television network, according to news stories at the time.
After the television project died, Father Juan Rivas began a weekday, half-hour radio program in Spanish, “Hombre Nuevo,” on which he plays music, answers letters and explains the Catholic faith. His program is heard on stations in California, Texas and parts of Latin America, said Father Brian Wilson, who is a campus minister with the Legionaries.
Wilson, who came to Southern California in 1985, divides his time between Caltech in Pasadena and the USC health sciences complex near the main USC campus. A third priest, Father Thomas White, assists Wilson and teaches some adult education classes.
“I’m the only one of the three who has an income,” Wilson said. As a result, the three have moved frequently whenever a convent is empty or other church space opens up. They are currently living in Monrovia.
As for descriptions of the Legionaries as conservative and tightly disciplined, Wilson said: “I’m not sure that you can put us in liberal or conservative boxes very well. Obviously, there are different ways of living the Catholic faith.”
