Today's episode is a little different.

It's the first of two Bonus Conversations, moments that take us behind the story to understand how the Legion of Christ operated not just as a religious order, but as a silent, all encompassing power.

Sometimes I forget how much power Mazielle and the Legion once had in Mexico.

It wasn't just about faith or education.

It was political, economic, and cultural.

They built an empire, universities for the elite, schools for the next generation of movers and shakers, and organizations that looked untouchable from the outside.

But what they really controlled wasn't just institutions.

It was this story, story and who got to tell it.

For decades, that control reached deep into the media.

Editors, reporters, publishers.

Everyone knew the red lines, the invisible limit between what could be said about Masielle and what couldn't.

His name opened doors, and it closed them to Crossing him could mean losing everything, a job, a reputation, a career, and silence was bought and sold like currency.

Even now, journalism in Mexico can feel like walking a tirope.

Many who tried to question the powerful learned that truth could be dangerous, and when it came to Marseille, few dared to ask questions at all.

One of the few people who dared to challenge that power was Journally see do dot comez Leva.

He's been reporting for more than forty years, politics, organized crime, corruption.

He's seeing what happens when you push too far and what telling the truth can cost you.

This is a bonus episode of Sacred Scandal.

The next two episodes will be different.

Their conversations interviews with people who helped us understand how the Legion of Christ really worked, not just as religious order, but as a media institution and as a cult.

In this episode, you'll hear Stido talk with journalist Roberta Arza about the night Mexican television broke the silence around marcill Maziel and about everything that came after.

My name is Elena Sada and this is secret Scandal, the many secrets of Marcelle Macil.

Episode eleven interview with Czido Gomez Leva.

We'll be back after a short break.

This conversation was recorded by Roberta Garza earlier this year.

You'll hear her voice asking the questions and Zido answering in Spanish.

Our producer Alvaro Espedes will translate Zido's answers so you can follow the conversation as it happened.

El dos de Mario Dello and basi it I remember it was the twelfth of May of nineteen eighty seven.

Channel forty Your channel, what the first to broadcast the notice of Marcel Marseille's abuses.

You were the first media in Mexico that published it.

That blew the story up national level, as.

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The original story had come out a few months earlier, in February of that same year.

It was first published by the Hartford Current by journalists Jason Barry and Gerald Brenner.

In Mexico, the first outlet to follow that story was the left leaning newspaper La Jornade, but Zio's team at Canal Quarinta were the first to take it to national television, even though there was huge pressure not too.

At that time, the Legion was one of the most powerful religious groups in Mexico, deeply connected to business elites, politicians, and major media networks.

Putting that report on air was a rare act of defiance in a country where almost no one there to question Nasia's image as a living saint.

Can you tell us what kind of pressure he was subjected to?

La Prescium, Bino and Premier were part The first notice came straight from the Legionaries of Christ, specifically from the president of the university in Mexico City, Universidada and IWAK.

Representatives from the Legion even went to the newsroom in person.

They told the team that the accusations against Masielle were completely false, that it was all part of an effort to damage the Legion and by extension, to harm the Catholic Church.

But it didn't stop there.

Soon government officials started getting involved too.

Even though Mexico is supposed to be a secular state, we can't really say that the government we had in ninety seven was left wing, but it also wasn't a government known for defending the Catholic Church either.

Back in nineteen ninety seven, the country was still tightly ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRE, which had held power for more than seventy years.

It wasn't a religious or conservative government, but it still stepped in to protect the Legion's image and that Zio says showed just how far their influence reached.

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As the air date got closer, the team started getting quote unquote invitations not to run the story.

Then the pressure increased, coming from big private companies whose founders and CEOs were sympathizers of the Legion of Christ.

Their message was simple, if Canal Quarenta aired the report, they'd pulled their ads, and some of them actually did so.

The pressure came from three sites, first the legionaries of Christ, then from top government officials, and finally from powerful private corporations.

That last one, the threat of losing add money, turned out to be the most effective form of censorship.

Were those threats very explicit, like did they actually tell you if you don't pull the program out, we will, you know, with throw the payment, we will take our commercial business elsewhere?

Was it that clear or was he sort of a veil threat?

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Was completely explicit.

In the last few days before the broadcast, the calls kept coming, people repeating the same message, don't air it.

It's a lie, it's an attack on the Legion.

You'll heard a saint, you'll offend the faith of millions of Mexicans.

And then came the warning, if you go ahead with it, the advertisers will pull out.

In Mexico, television survives almost entirely on add money, so a threat like that could be devastating, and it showed just how coordinated the censorship campaign had become.

In those final hours, representantez La Princes.

The Las Emprisos conquer tamine is to stop Latica.

One of the most influential businessmen in Mexico at the time, Lorenzo Serviitke, the late founder and president of Group of IMBO, personally reached out, speaking on behalf of several major advertisers he had rallied to Massile's cause.

Not all of them followed through with the boycott, but some did.

In the final hours, it was Lorenzo's brother, Roberto Servitke, who took the lead, expressing his supposition to the program in much stronger, less diplomatic terms.

Despite all the warnings and the loss of advertising, Ciro and his team decided to go ahead.

They aired the program anyway and accepted the consequences.

We'll be back after a short break.

A part of a woman as much so, apart from the economical boycott that you were subjected, that the channel was objected to.

Were there any other threats any more, concrete threads against maybe your life, physical threats or was it just a commercial kind of thing?

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On the very afternoon the program was scheduled to air, just a few hours before broadcast, Sita's wife received an anonymous phone call at their home.

The message was simple and chilling.

It would be better not to wear the program as they knew where they lived.

While such intimidation might sadly feel routine in Mexico today, back in nineteen ninety seven, it was not.

Back then.

It was shocking, a clear attempt to silence through fear.

The threat was completely anonymous.

Now you he told us that the government, the Mexican government was actively soliciting you on the channel and the channel's owner to kill then note to not broadcast it.

But it was there any other like concrete threats or was it just an ask Yamada?

There was, in fact a phone call from Levano Science, the private secretary to then President Tornetto Selijo, essentially one of the most powerful figures in the administration others, like officials from the Communications and Transportation Ministry, also reached out.

At that time, that office had the authority to complicate or even revoke a television station's broadcast license, so their involvement carried a real weight.

Still, not everyone inside the government opposed them.

The Secretary of Education personical to tell them, don't back down, stand on the side of the truth.

Levano's Science has also stated that President Slijo told him that any approach to Canal Quarinta had to be done personally, not as an official directive.

It was a tense and confusing moment.

Some officials openly defended the Legion of Christ.

Others urged the journalists to move forward.

But the message from those closest to the legion wasn't mistakable.

They didn't want to hear arguments or evidence or prove.

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It might be a little difficult for people here in the United States, specially in the United States, to think that a religious order or an institution of that sort would have that much power, power enough to kill a whole news station, to just run it to the ground.

How could you help us explain the control that the legionaries of Christ the whole that they had over the power circles in Mexico.

The imbalance was enormous.

They were Elaiath and we were David Canal Quarinta was a very popular but still small, independent station, and the Legionaries were one of the most powerful institutions in the country.

Their influence reached into every major sphere, business, education, and government.

Marcell Moziel was a figure of absolute authority, the kind of men who accompanied top business leaders and politicians at weddings, gallas, and state events.

Wherever Mexico's elide gathered, Mazill was there.

The Legionaries' universities like Universidada and Nawak boasted their academic excellence and their ability to cultivate the next generation of power brokers, all while keeping them safe from modern secular ideological threats and in step with the best Christian values.

The order projected sophistication, discipline, and moral prestige, and that was their currency.

They saw the idea of success as with a divine seal of approval.

It's a poler comments.

For years that made them untouchable, but that power began to crumble in nineteen ninety seven.

The year Canal Quarenta aired its report.

Back then, it was barely noticeable.

The real collapse would come almost a decade later, after two thousand and five and two thousand and six, when the Vatican finally sanctioned Mosiel, even if they wouldn't officially confirm the accusations of sexual abuse, it was clear that Mosile's power inside the Vatican was vanishing.

Sido calls it a cataclysmic fall, not for the Legion as an institution, which managed to rebuild, but for Masil himself.

He died ten years after that broadcast disgrace and isolated, his saintly image shattered beyond repair.

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This case stands as undeniable proof of how a powerful organization led by a man who was ultimately confirmed to be a serial sexual predator began to collapse because of the courage of just a handful of victims four five, maybe seven people who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, decided to speak out.

They found support from a few journalists and media outlets in the United States and Mexico who were willing to listen and publish their stories.

For years afterward, the legion managed to reimpose silence, to bury the scandal on their influence and fear, but the truth never disappeared.

It remained there, just beneath the surface, and.

Eventually that truth brought about what Zido calls the defeat, a total collapse of Marcial Maciel's personal empire, a catechism for the man once held as a saint.

We'll be back with another full interview on our next and final episode of Sacred Scandal, Many Secrets of Marcel Massiere Secret Scandal.

The Many Secrets of Marcell Maseil is a production of a half podcast in partnership with Iheartmichael Doula podcast Network, and is hosted by me Elena Sada, written by Menissa Hendrix and Alvalo sz Pedes, Produced by alvaaloce Pes and Robert Tagarza.

Research and reporting by Robert Tagarza, edited by Jasmine Rometo with the help of Carmen Gratol, fact checking by Annapla Tovar.

The vocal coach for me Elene Sada is in a Tapia.

Executive producers at a Half Podcast are Carmen Graterol, Isaac Lee, and j H.

Carr, mixing on sound designed by Patrick and Jonnes, original music by Darko and I Am based on Patrick Hart's original composition.

Executive users that I heard are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana.

Alexis Cardoza also serves as producer.

Circars Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Varos