When I left the Legion in two thousand and one, I thought I had escaped for good.

I was thousands of miles away, watching from the outside as the Empire began to crack.

From Afar, I could finally see everything Masille had done, all the lives he had ruined, and the men who had there to speak.

I read it, all the stories that had once been hidden from us.

And even though my time in the Legion felt like another life, I was starting to realize that distance wasn't going to make me free.

Knowing the truth didn't make the memories disappear.

They just followed me everywhere I went.

I was living in New York when I got the box.

It was some time after I left.

I couldn't go back home to Monterey, even though I missed it terribly.

My family was divided by my decision to leave, and the whole community was too.

Some people stopped calling, others pretended I didn't exist.

So if I wanted to start over, it had to be somewhere new, a place where no one knew who I was or what I had done.

My first apartment was small and a little dark.

The walls never really looked clean, no matter how much I scrabbed them.

The window faced a brick wall, but I was proud of it anyway.

It was mine.

For the first time, I was completely alone, no one telling me what to think, what to wear, or how to pray, Just me and the steady home of the refrigerator.

One morning, I woke up to a strange smell.

When I opened the door, there was a box sitting on the floor outside my apartment.

My neighbor said it had been there all night.

I picked it up, brought it inside, and opened it on the counter.

It was a bundle of brown paper.

Inside it a dead blackbird.

For a moment, I couldn't move.

I just stood there staring at it.

The feathers were stuck together.

The smell was heavy and metallic.

Everything about it felt delivered like a message.

But there was no note, no name, nothing to explain how it ended at my door.

I wrapped the body in a plastic bar, sealed it and dropped it down the garbageth Then I sat on the kitchen floor and tried to understand what it meant.

Was it a prank, someone from the lead and trying to scare me, or someone I had heard while I was still inside the Legion, someone I had recruited, reminding me that I couldn't escape what I had done, Because as much as I was hurting back then, I never forgot that I had also heard others, even if I hadn't meant to, I had been part of the machine.

I thought about another time, years earlier, when I was working in the Legion's house in Illinois.

After a sleepless night, I opened the door of the cabin and I found a dead blackbird on the ground outside.

Back then, it felt like an omen a warning I didn't yet know how to read.

But that time in New York, it felt different.

It didn't feel like death anymore.

It felt like a sign that something was ending, so something else could begin.

Blackbirds can mean slavery, danger, evil, but in other stories they also mean rebirth and survival.

For months after that, I kept turning those ideas over in my mind.

What everything I had lived through was supposed to mean, Why had gone through it, Whether there was some hidden lesson I still hadn't seen.

And that's when I realized something.

Resilience isn't believing that everything happens for a reason.

It's making things happen for a reason.

It's giving meaning to what once tried to destroy you.

And that's when I began to write.

At first, it was just fragments, small sentences, flashes of memory, things I needed to get out of my body.

Years later it became a book.

I called it Blackbird.

I wrote to let the world know whom MASSI had really was what he had done, but also to remind myself that I was still here, that whatever he tried to take away from me, my voice, my faith, my sense of self, he didn't win.

If the box was meant to silence me, the book was my way of answering back, a way of saying, you can try to bury me, but I will keep singing.

And I wasn't alone.

There were others like me, people whose lives had been burned down by marciel but who chose to speak anyway.

We were all trying to rebuild something from the ashes, to turn pain into something that could finally breathe again.

My name is Elena Sadah, and this is secret Scandal, the many Secrets of Marcelle Moseille Episode ten, Rebirth will be right back.

If you type Legionaries of Christ into Google maps, you'll see one of the institutions pop up nearby.

That's true whether you're in Canada, Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines, South Korea, or Spain.

It may be called a spirituality center, an academy, or renow Christian retreat.

But the Legion never disappeared.

They just rebranded.

Today they operate in twenty three countries.

They manage more than one hundred schools and almost a dozen universities, and lead a global network of thousands of lay members and a thousand priests.

Each year they educate almost two hundred thousand students.

That's more than ever before, and every descent in Rome they still broadcast the ordination of new priests.

This past year, twenty two more were ordained.

Sometimes I wonder how that's even possible, how the Legion could survive after so much scrutiny, And then I remember, this is what Masille did best, turning faith into a brand.

If someone knew how to do marketing in the name of God, it was him.

Around the same time I was in New York felling diary after diary, sitting in a small desk, trying to make sense of everything I had lived through.

Masille was also working on a book, A book about his life, the version he wanted the world to remember the biography of a saint, a boy born in a small town who, despite adversity, built an empire in the name of God.

But the book was never really about faith or God.

It was about him.

When he began to sense that people were starting to see the cracks in the story he'd spend decades constructing, he became obsessed with his legacy, with how future generations would remember him.

He wanted to be immortalized and worshiped as a modern saint, so he commissioned what was essentially a public relations campaign.

There was the book and also a television series to be produced, nineteen episodes of miracles, virtues and carefully edited memories a new Gospel.

According to Masiel, it's strange to think that both of us were trying to rewrite our lives those years, but for completely different reasons.

I was writing to cleanse my soul.

Massiel was writing to cleanse his image.

He tried really hard to rewrite history, but by the end of the two thousands, the truth was already out.

Even the Legion's powerful pr machine couldn't compete with the avalanche of reports of addiction, money laundering, and abuse.

Faced With the truth too public to deny, the Legion changed tactics.

They started to use new language to defend what Mosielle had done.

Instead of talking about crimes and lies, they started talking about errors and human weakness.

But the evidence was too damning, the attempts to sell masiel as a saint too absurd to stomach.

The TV show never aired, that book never made it to print, and little by little people began to back away.

The number of people like me who once had bared him and now saw him for what he truly was, grew with each passing day.

However, inside the world Masille built, devotion blurred into idolatry.

No matter how much evidence surfaced, some people refuse to see the truth because when a man like Masille falls, he doesn't just bring down an institution, he breaks everything around it.

The Legion wasn't just the church.

It was an identity and a way of life, and if you try to take that from someone, resistance is bound to happen.

Seeing the truth made friends stop speaking, parents and children found themselves in opposite sides of the same story.

Being part of a cult doesn't just hurt the victims it.

There's families apart.

My cousin, Robert Tararts, a journalist who have spent years studying high control groups, remembers it clearly.

And it became the crazy, you know, the crazy woman of the family because it was like, you're an idiot.

You don't know what you're saying.

He was a holy man, et cetera.

Why are you saying that you have no basis?

So that began sort of to a road, this sort of unity we have because we were again, we were one of those families that we had lunched together every weekend and we played guitar together, and it was like this prototypical My mother was one of those, of course, being a Catholic conservative, was stay home at home mom.

We did a lot of activities together.

We went on picnics, that kind of thing.

We made a point of, you know, getting together and talking about our lives and whatever.

But Marsiel had become a forbidden subject.

His name alone could split a table in two.

So the people in my family that were that had been especially close to the legion and that were incredibly let's say, brainwashed, wou would you stud poorly as brainwashed by them?

First I remember, for example, my sister when we came together at this launches and I began, you know, something came up.

The topic came up, and I began questioningly, why is he doing this?

Why is my heill doing this?

Why is he accusing these people if he has no basis?

And my sister would just get up and throw the chair and just leave.

What had once held them together, faith, loyalty, tradition became the very thing that tore the family apart.

And in the end we just ended with two parts of the family.

I mean, of course everything has degreased, but the people that were very much, very close to the religion, my elder sisters and brothers specially, they sort of drifted apart from the younger siblings.

And some of them stayed in touch and some didn't.

But it definitely, I mean, we haven't seen each other in years, like years.

For me, that was the reason I couldn't go back home.

My parents couldn't accept my decision to leave.

My father eventually tried to understand, but for years my mother couldn't bear the idea that her daughter had become a treator to the legion, and that was precisely the Legion's intent.

So what happens is they pit children against their parents because for them, the only thing that matters, the center of the moral universe of anyone should be the Legion of Christ.

So if you leave, if you're a daughter that wants to leave, that's a scene.

That's an incredible scene.

That's a transgression.

And if you commit that kind of transgression, you're seeing as someone undesirable.

Oh but that's my daughter.

Oh too bad, Too bad.

Delberta wasn't the only one who lived through that kind of divide.

It happened in my family too.

After Masille's death, battle lines were drawn.

You could believe the victims and leave, or believe the church and stay.

There was no middle ground.

When I left, I knew what that choice could cost me.

It wasn't just that church I was walking away from.

It wasn't my family too.

People I loved stopped speaking to me.

Some said I had been manipulated, Others called me a traitor.

But I couldn't pretend anymore.

The truth was too heavy to keep.

Living inside the line, a strange from my family, without a community to rely on, and living in a city that didn't know my name, the only rest I found was in writing.

Putting my memories on paper gave my pain in shape a reason.

But there were days when I lost that direction, when the purpose of it all seemed to dissolving to loneliness.

I would sit by the window, watching people pass below, and wonder what any of it was for, If the Legion would go on, if the institution would survive, no matter what, then what was the point of my story?

I didn't know the answer yet, but I would soon.

And I wasn't the only one more on that.

After the break, after everything, what gave me strength was realizing I wasn't alone.

There were others who had walked the same path, women who had given their youth, their trust, and their silence to the Legion.

Some left oken, others found a new beginning.

Mariana Martinezos Marianna Martinez is one of them.

She now runs a human resources company, but before that, her story became the same way, minded with faith, devotion and the promise of belonging.

Youconda then lend Cristo Durante, Satam and mividaosa locals Trina.

She was a Mexican concerrada for almost ten years.

All through her twenties.

Our stories share some similarities, but many differences as well.

We were both looking for answers inside the church, and we both wanted to help.

Both she and I had genuine and honest intentions to do good.

You're around AAA di Verdia and Studiandomalkarera Soava Communication impressil Nanobios.

Before joining the legion, Paniena was a lively girl.

She loved going out, had boyfriends, and was studying corporate communications about a third of the way through her degree.

She had a life that looked like anyone else's prusimbre.

Ikemas hyperc exists, bruno existence, compass, but.

She always carried a kind of restlessness.

Since she was a child, She's asked herself the same questions, why am I here?

What's the point of my life?

So when she turned twenty, she made a decision that would change everything.

She chose to dedicate her life to the Legionaries of Christ.

After three years of hermation, she became a concertrata and was sent to Madrid.

But after around nine years of a very silent and disciplined life, she started questioning if she wanted to keep going in that direction.

She spent most of her time in a convent, doing daily chores of cleaning and studying the Bible, but from time to time she would get to travel to other countries to spread the gospel, meet people, and ultimately to do what she always wanted to do, to help people directly.

A fog on the umpse Ake or second Convent as reflects promise us I is.

On the us.

That's when Marianna began to realize she felt happier outside than within the convent.

Each time she reflected on her vows of obedience, poverty and chastity, she felt a growing certainty that this life wasn't meant for her.

And on one of those trips, she met someone who would change her life forever.

Clara Meda in factore.

Oniok is me at all parejaspos.

She met a young seminarian.

He was interesting, intelligent, smart, curious, and they were around the same age.

He was unlike any other legionary she.

Ever metmu and conjunto Azemists Adoles Santos de Madrid, and to commode mission, they were assigned to work with the same group of teenagers at a school.

Two people who had both given their lives to the Legion, both trained to obey, both starving for something real, and somewhere in that routine, between the prayers and the silence, they fell in love, but love had no place inside that world.

Every time they met, she would return alone, rock the same quiet holes, eating silence, praying silence, sleep in silence, all while her soul screamed for air.

Eventually they decided to leave, he went for first.

Six months later, she followed.

Ena bas Ok, Come on miama Felie.

Then does as primeras It's navidaves al mundo Macoperto Mexico, compra jeans.

In bikinistes.

She vividly remembers her first day back in Mexico.

She went out to buy jeans, a sweater, a bikini and earrings.

After ten years away, she suddenly had to rediscovery world she left behind, and even asked herself, so what is in style now?

Param f masifil jodana trintanos?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Dat Christisavian position, look.

Yesavi.

For Marianna, living was harder than joining.

She was thirty and most of her friends already had their own lives.

Hers had only ever existed inside the Legion.

She had a role there a purpose.

Stepping away felt like standing on the edge of the navis, wondering what she could possibly do after so many years of knowing only how to pray.

But somehow all those years of prayer and silence became useful without even realizing it.

Life as a Concertrata had taught her a lot about people, how to listen, how to meditate, how to keep a group together.

The same skills she once used inside the Legion now help her build a new life outside of it.

You know, you creole the mister princes Man's grande applico tantivida personal vida matrimonial visaiel is elconosim into personnel selfinale frondesos, the muchoslencio, the mucha reflection so to pinsente, those basis area your messia on examined, the concinia i makin del nivel, the focoreti.

For Marianna, those ten years inside the Legion became a strange kind of training, use of silence, of constant self examination.

Twice she would sit down and analyze her thoughts, her words, her actions, looking in what she could almost see through herself.

El joer.

Connours to stall me processes the leader as well stambasaus and experiencia the personal caparin Diduran.

This was design.

That habit stayed with her.

It became the foundation of her new life, something she now applies in everything she does, in her marriage, in her work, in the way she relates to others.

Having gone through all of it allows her to guide others towards knowing themselves.

Today, all her leadership programs are built around the same idea, the deep self awareness she learned during those ten years of silence and their non professional life.

Marianna and her husband Louis also thrived.

Louis, being from Spain, followed her to Mexico and the rest is history.

Aarrinale is the toluyo Ela morsaia Alano, Medio Anillo Lanzi and des casamos Mexico disposiso to be thesihos.

In the end, everything fell into place.

Louis found a job, they got married and had two children, now eight and six.

Madianna describes their marriage as happy and real, with the same challenges any couple faces, but grounded in genuine love.

Like me, Marianna still carries those years of isolation, obedience and discipline with all the good and the bad that comes with them.

You can't erase the past like that.

All you can do is learn to use it.

That's why I understand her, and why I feel close to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who have left the legion and started over from nothing, people who like us, chose to speak.

People often ask me why I keep writing about this, Why I open the wound again, Why tell a story so many would rather forget?

The truth is writing is how I make sense of it all, how I give shape to something that could have swallowed me whole.

When I started Blackbird, I thought I was writing for myself, to understand what had happened, to pull the pieces of my life back together.

But as I wrote, I realized I wasn't alone.

That there were others scattered across countries and decades who were also trying to make sense of what Mazille had done to them.

The men who came forward in the nineties, like Jose Barba, the ones who had been abused as boys, like Rawul Gonzalez.

They were the first to break the silence.

I never contacted them directly.

I didn't know them personally, but I knew their names.

I knew the price they paid for speaking out.

They fought for years to bring Macile to justice, and Marianna is not a stranger to these issues either.

So in my concente the los Criminez from Cozados, so no concents soloticos.

You know the la me due to his birthday, start the muccism because us for eating mucism and patia.

She's aware of the crimes committed by Masil in a way that moves her to tears.

She knows she was fortunate, yet she's painfully conscious that many others were left deeply wounded, whether through sexual abuse or abuse of power.

But those people also rebuilt.

They learned to resignify what had been taken from them, to turn the unbearable into testimony.

And some of us, so still carrying the scars, kept searching for our own version of freedom, justice and love me.

This is al arme de l lejon partio conun principile mass profundo kenm mio de libertada and the jume Sali santhiake lalionis suscranias.

It's a model me.

There are many ways Madianna and I have learned from the lives we once lived inside the Legion.

For her, that knowledge shows up in her work at her human resources company.

For me, in my work as an educator, or.

In the model Proposit, proposals and press n supropos it bandolosias so com a loca rastrasindare claramente.

Madianna found that her time in the Legion helped her find purpose more clearly, both as a person and as a business woman, and now she helps others this over their own purpose in their work in her business boot camps.

Whenever she shares an insight or gives advice, she always finds herself saying the same.

Thing, consuantiment observation.

So indigo, come on formacion.

I learned this during my time as a nun, she says.

Looking back, Marianna feels gratitude for that formation and a depted gave her life.

But that does not erase or excludes all the shadow, all the darkness that lingers on top of the Legion of Christ.

The hardest part is not knowing it the Legion will ever disappear, because even after all these years, it's still here.

I catch my self wondering if the Legion will ever face justice, And if it does well, would that even mean?

Would it bring peace?

Would it heal the wounds?

I'm not sure.

None of it would change the past.

But even though justice never came the way we hoped it would, staying silent was never an option.

Silence is what allowed mysell to die in peace.

Silence is what allowed the system to survive him.

Speaking, even when it's late, even when it hurts, is what keeps that from happening again.

And maybe that's what we've been doing here together.

Every word in this story, every voice you've heard, is a small act of justice, not the kind written in courtrooms, but the kind that lives in memory.

Because now you listen to this, you know what happened.

You've carried these voices with me.

You've seen how deep the damage runs and how much strength it takes to rebuild.

Maybe this helps someone recognize the signs in a friend, a student, a loved one who's still trapped in a place like this, Or maybe it could help that person understand that living isn't betrayal, that silence isn't virtue, that faith and obedience are not the same thing.

Not long ago, I sat with my family again for years, Masielle's name had divided us.

We couldn't even mention his name without someone leaving the table.

But this time no one left.

We talked late into the night, circling around the truth none of us had wanted to name.

At some point the conversation turned to bigger questions.

What makes the cult, what makes a religion?

And how do you tell the difference between them.

No one had all the answers, but at least we were asking together, and that to me feels like hope that a conversation, once drowned in silence, could finally happen, that a family broken by belief could find a way to listen again.

I have a family that listens, four blessed children, and a life that feels like mine again.

Also, I have a loving God who created me, which means my life must be worth every struggle, and I must still be lovable in his eyes.

These days, my faith looks different is in my morning rocks, in the smell of coffee, in the sound of people I love when they laugh too hard.

It's in knowing that I belonged to the world again.

When I first opened that box in New York, I thought that the Blackbird was a message of fear.

Now I see it differently.

It was proof that I had survived, that even in the darkest silence, life can find its way back to song.

Sacred Scandal The Many Secrets of Marcelle Miseille is a production of AHA Podcast in partnership with Iheartmichael Tura Podcast Network, and it is hosted by me Elena Sada, written by Manissa Hendrix and Alvaro Szpedes, Produced by alvaoces Pedes and Roberta Garza.

Research and reporting by Roberta Garza, edited by Jasmine Rometo with the help of Carmen Grato.

In fact checking by Annabella Toward.

The vocal coach for me Elenezada is Ina Tabia.

Executive producers at a har podcast are Carmen Gradov, Isaac Lee, and j H.

Khr.

Mixing and sound design by Patrick and Jones.

Original music by Darko and I Am based on Patrick Hart's original composition.

Executive producers that I Heard are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana.

Alexis Cardosa also serves as producer.

Sircars Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Varos