The co-founder, former superior and spiritual director of the Family of Mary (FM) for thirty years, Fr Paul Maria Sigl, 75, has been found guilty of alleged abuse of the priestly ministry and malfeasance in office, as well as omissions in the exercise of his ministry.
The Family of Mary is a neo-conservative community strictly adhering to the Novus Ordo. It was founded by Monsignor Pavol Hnilica, a Slovak bishop who was ordained in the underground during the communist era in then Czechoslovakia.
According to Adista.it (5 November), the sentence was pronounced by an ecclesiastical tribunal composed of three canonists - the Salesian Father Markus Graulich, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Father Grzegorz Erlebach (professor of canon law at the Gregorian University) and Father Ulrich Rhode (Jesuit, dean of the faculty of canon law at the same university).
The guilty verdict was pronounced on 18 September. The Dicastery for the Clergy notified the sentence on 5 November. The sentence was approved by Pope Francis on 11 October, making it impossible to appeal.
The ecclesiastical trial has lasted more than two years. Father Sigl was accused of "psychological" and "spiritual" abuse and "mental manipulation", especially of former members of the community [who often hold a grudge against the community they left].
The judgement against the 75-year-old priest imposes various penalties over the next ten years. He is forbidden to live in or have contact with a house belonging to his community, to hear confessions or give spiritual direction.
He must live in a place determined by the papal commissioner.
In his personal relationship, Father Sigl is said to have exercised forms of psychological and affective blackmail and theological mystification aimed at creating relationships of dependence, generating feelings of guilt, preventing autonomous thinking [as if "autonomous thinking" would be welcome in the 'synodal' Church] and binding people to the community.
At least the trial did not involve sexual abuse.
Picture: Paul Maria Sigl, © Kirche in Not, #newsRsgngbblmf