‘I believed what they shared with me’: Concern mounts as controversial Catholic sect expands

Saturday, 30 November 2024

A Catholic order investigated for abuse and unauthorised exorcisms was asked to leave the diocese. Instead, it’s expanding. Former members of the Sons of The Most Holy Redeemer fear the group’s leadership will never cede control and the church needs to do more. SINEAD GILL reports.

It did not take Father Colin Marshall long to suspect his superior, Fr Michael Mary, enjoyed having control over other people. But one incident stands out.

It was the mid-1990s, and Marshall and other members of an obscure Catholic order called the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer ‒ then called the Transalpine Redemptorists and operating outside the Catholic Church ‒ were living in France.

He said Michael became angry at the local authorities for denying his request to bathe in a religiously significant stream at Lourdes ‒ a famous Catholic pilgrimage site.

Michael was “furious”, Marshall said, and claims followers were told to strip off their habits*, leave their habits where people could see, and swim in the river anyway “out of revenge”.

Marshall refused to participate. Eventually, he says, police told them to get out or risk public indecency. It turned out it was the wrong river, but Michael’s behaviour stuck with him.

“I resented [it] … you really shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of rubbish from a religious superior.”

But plenty of people have. Michael Mary, born Gregory Sim and raised in Central Otago, founded the monastic community of the Transalpine Redemptorists in England in 1988. He had one trainee priest and several aspirants. Marshall joined soon after, following Michael from Kent to France in the mid-1990s, then to Scotland in 1999 when the group bought an island in Orkney, near where Michael’s paternal grandmother was from, and where its headquarters remain.

The group expanded to Christchurch in 2007 and was officially invited to join the diocese in 2014. By this point it had been formally recognised by the Catholic Church and agreed - in consultation with the Vatican - to change its name to the Sons of The Most Holy Redeemer. In 2020, it established its third monastery in the US.

But as early as 2021, allegations of abuse emerged. The Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests said they reported allegations of ritualistic abuse, sexual grooming and prolonged, unauthorised exorcisms - some involving children - to the diocese and police, but nothing was done.

The group went public with the claims last year. Former Sons and survivor advocates spoke about their experiences and anguish that nothing was done. Following media coverage, the Vatican launched an investigation.

The Sons, through a spokesperson, reject all accusations of wrongdoing. A police spokesperson said a criminal investigation was not pursued in 2021 because there was no formal complaint.

The Vatican investigation ended in July and the findings are sealed. However, on Rome’s recommendation, Christchurch Bishop Michael Gielen stripped the group’s priests of their authority and ordered all professed members leave the diocese.

But the Sons are not going without a fight. They have appealed Gielen’s orders. They recently bought a church in North Canterbury and say they will take Gielen to the Catholic equivalent of the Supreme Court. While they’re still not allowed to exercise sacred ministry ‒ like hear confessions and give mass ‒ they can to stay in the diocese for now.

Critics are deeply troubled by the expansion, and say the church’s lack of transparency has not helped. They believe Ohoka residents, just north of Christchurch, should know who their new neighbours are.

Gielen has not said publicly what the allegations are, and did not mention the word abuse when he published his orders against the Sons. But he told The Press he had met the former members who made the allegations and gave his most telling comment on the controversy yet:

“I believed what they shared with me.”

Cut off from family

Elizabeth* has not had a relationship with her child for several years.

The withdrawal was gradual but heartbreaking. The two had been close, but over several years, phone calls grew rarer. Then they stopped altogether. Eventually, Elizabeth stopped seeing them completely. It was only in the last year a possible reason emerged: she learned her child had joined the Sons.

Now, they have a family of their own who Elizabeth is not allowed to see. The loss is “devastating”, she says.

“I’m concerned for their health and wellbeing and that they are isolated from the people who love them.”

Her confusion and anger turned to horror when she read reports about what the Sons’ leadership had been accused of.

She also met Gielen, and says she left the meeting feeling reassured he was listening, but that the church needed to do more. She believes Sons members are trapped in the spiritual version of an abusive relationship.

“Which basically is [telling them] ‘you’re going to burn in hell’ … can you imagine how these people are feeling?

“They’ve been brainwashed and they need help.”

Mary did not respond directly to questions, but a spokesperson for the group rejects all accusations made against him or the group. He says it’s the traditional Latin mass - not the Sons - that is the centre of their lives. “Let these people worry about their own families, social lives, and brains.”

‘They’re on the war path’

When Gielen announced his orders ‒ possibly the harshest decrees made against a Catholic order in Aotearoa’s history ‒ he did not say what the allegations were or what rules the group had broken. Only that his measures were taken “for the good of the Church and the faithful”.

In this void, former members of the community say misinformation has thrived.

Julie* was initially optimistic about the bishop’s orders. She says she left the Sons community years ago after her complaints about abuse ‒ against people she knew and believed ‒ were ignored and she was ostracised.

She says the Sons community touted the bishop’s letter as proof it was being persecuted for its beliefs.

“They’re on the warpath now,” she says.

Julie remains a dedicated follower of Latin mass, but says outsiders have no idea how extreme the Canterbury group has become. “If you haven’t been in there and heard Fr Michael talking, and heard his sermons and the way he communicates with people … he has these people completely under his thumb.”

She says the group’s recent expansion to North Canterbury, in spite of the church’s moves to oust them, is concerning. “That tells you it’s about establishing power and control.”

Steven* left the Sons after growing disillusioned with Mary’s leadership.

He was an early joiner of the Christchurch branch and says the Sons’ teachings grew increasingly extreme the more involved Michael became. This has even seeped into members’ personal lives, Steven says, with people increasingly running family decisions past the priests.

“[It is] a frog in a pot-type-scenario. Most of the ones that are going now haven’t had an experience of the Latin mass outside of these guys. So it’s like, because they offer the Latin mass, it gives them this seal of authority and authenticity to anything and everything they say.

“[Mary] is not respecting or following the authority of the church. He is a law unto himself.”

The Sons’ spokesperson says the priests are not too involved in members’ personal lives and it’s up to individuals to decide who they seek guidance from.

He rejects that Mary’s teachings are extreme, saying the Christian faith deals with “grave matters” - life and death, heaven and hell. Mary is not the only member who gives sermons and there is a good balance, he says: “They are all a joy to listen to.”

It’s “absolutely ridiculous” to claim members believe they will go to hell if they’re disloyal to the group, he says.

“There is no cult. There is no control.”

‘Something was bound to happen’

The Sons practise traditional Latin mass ‒ a conservative form of mass that was all but banned by the Catholic Church for decades.

The traditional version was reformed in the 1960s by the church in an effort to modernise. By 1970, priests could conduct mass in any language and face the congregation during the Eucharist. It also dropped an anti-Semitic Good Friday prayer.

However, Latin mass devotees considered the changes a dilution of worship. Some refused to follow the new rules and left the church or were excommunicated, like French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who inspired Mary to start his own monastic community.

Marshall joined the Sons in 1990, following Mary through the UK, France and eventually to Christchurch, helping set up the new branch.

He was raised in an Evangelical Church, so says he was used to “hellfire” preaching, but Mary often delivered the most severe teachings.

“He liked to scare people … you get instant results,” he says. “He was always liable to find the scariest [sermons] … some of the stuff was really, even by 18th century standards, pretty bleak.”

Marshall stayed with the Sons for two decades, but in 2010 - after growing increasingly disillusioned - he left. He felt Mary became “domineering” and “full of himself”.

Mary had always been a “loose cannon”, he says. In religious orders, rules from the founder were meant to be taken seriously, but Mary “always just did what he wanted to do. If he wanted to change it, he changed it”.

“He could get up in the morning and issue new orders … and then he’d be the first to disobey them.

“It was just a roller coaster.”

Those rules could be trivial, Marshall says, like the time priests had to wear excessively large crucifixes on their belt during prayer, or when they were ordered to start counting prayers and increase how many they did daily.

However, Mary would soon lose interest, Marshall says, and the rules lapsed.

The Sons’ spokesperson says Mary is the order’s leader, and his job is to govern “whether he likes it or not”. He thinks what Marshall shared is “scraping at the bottom of the barrel” and laughable.

Today, Marshall considers himself lucky. He says he never blindly followed Mary, but saw how some people who joined the order did.

He is still a devout Latin mass priest, now based in an Australian diocese, but worries members of the Sons members haven’t experienced a Latin mass community outside Mary’s control, and don’t know what’s normal.

His concerns are exacerbated by a community member’s anonymous post on Mary’s new blog in November.

They wrote: “We do not simply go to the Latin Mass - the Latin Mass is WHO WE ARE” and praised the Sons for directing the community in “the correct way”, which did not assault or abuse God.

Former Sons members fear the community - estimated to be about 250 people, including many children - are convinced no mass but the Sons’ is valid.

“They’re better off in a normal [ordinary mass] than with a domineering Latin mass priest,” Marshall said.

“The monastery should be closed down.”

The Sons’ spokesperson rejects that anyone believes the Sons are the only ones offering valid mass.

In a letter from Mary to Gielen, supplied to The Press, he wrote the Sons would walk away on condition of three permanent replacement priests being found from one of three named traditional communities in the church.

It would also be on the condition it would involve no 'derelict of duty” on the Sons’ part, which Fr Joe Grayland - a priest of 30 years and liturgy expert - understood to mean the Sons wanted to be absolved of any alleged wrongdoing.

Bishop stands by survivors

Julie, Elizabeth and Steven say if the bishop’s decrees are not enough to convince the community to leave, he needs to be bolder.

The Press understands that because the investigation was led by the Vatican, not the diocese ‒ and because the orders are under appeal ‒ Gielen is reluctant to say more. The diocese also believes the Vatican recommendations - and Gielen’s actions - should speak for themselves.

In a statement, Gielen voiced support for survivors and defended his position.

“I believed what they shared with me. I took the strongest possible action, asking the Vatican to investigate the allegations raised. I adopted the Vatican’s recommendations and issued appropriate decrees. We continue to work for those decrees to be implemented in full.”

The Sons’ spokesperson insists that without any charges, the accusations are untrue, embellished or hearsay.

The Sons expand

In the meantime, the Sons are in expansion mode. In October, they bought St Albans Anglican Church in Ohoka, North Canterbury, for $500,000.

Anglican Bishop Peter Carrell says he had no idea they were selling to the Sons until it was too late. The sale was brokered by a lawyer purportedly acting for a soon-to-be trust called “friends of St Albans” and did not disclose a connection to the Sons, he says.

The Sons spokesperson says they did this because they believed the Anglicans would block the deal. An email dated October 31 ‒ seen by The Press and sent to the Anglicans’ lawyer ‒ revealed who the buyer was, and that the intended use for the property was as a church.

Carrell says the diocese wasn’t aware of this disclosure until The Press alerted them to it. October 31 was 20 days after the sale agreement was signed, he says. It would have been too late to back out.

“We would not have sold this church property to the Transalpine Redemptorists had they been upfront from the beginning.”

The Sons already own a monastery in South Canterbury and a hermitage north of Rangiora, plus their original property in St Albans, Christchurch. Their entire New Zealand property portfolio has a rateable value of $5 million.

Persistent ‘failure’

Undaunted, the Sons continue to defy the church’s rules and the bishop’s orders, according to the diocese.

Grayland says Gielen’s sanctions aren’t working because the group don’t respect him.

“They ultimately don’t respect the whole church since [the reforms]. You can see that when you go back in their history.”

Gielen would have to be “quite courageous” to do more than he already has, Grayland says. Standing by survivors is a chance for the church to prove it has learned from the past, and the appalling injustices exposed in the Government’s recent abuse in care inquiry.

But, he believes the Catholic bishops, not just Gielen, are already failing. In November, following the Government’s abuse in care apology, a joint letter was read to all parishioners, lamenting the actions, lack of actions, sins and crimes of people working for the church.

In liturgical terms, Grayland says it means parishioners were being asked to share responsibility for the failures of church leadership.

“When you read that lament, there’s nothing that says we, the people of God, lament that we have bishops who are so f…ing useless.”

* Names have been changed to protect privacy.

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Father Mary asked followers to strip naked to bathe in a religiously significant stream at Lourdes. Father Marshall says they actually stripped their habits. (Amended 6.16pm, November 30, 2024)