Mexico was in kills.

In the nineteen nineties.

A beloved presidential candidate had been assassinated.

The pessont had collapsed, and families lost everything overnight.

And in the middle of all that kills, Pope to Paul the Second visited the country.

He held mass smiled, waved, people adored him.

But behind the scenes, away from the crowds and cameras, Masielle was there too, right in the inner circle, and soon after the publicly praised him as an efficacious guide to youth.

For most people it seemed like a throwaway comment, but for those hurt by Massielle's secrets, it was a knife in the god.

He brought up all these questions.

Did the Pope not know or did he not want to know?

Either way, it was impossible to continue to be silent.

That same month, someone asked Alberdo Atier to meet with a man he didn't know.

He said yes, having no idea that this meeting would change his life forever.

Atier is tall, with kind eyes and silver hair.

At the time, he was a Diacesan priest in his forties, respected, thoughtful, known for speaking his mind.

He wasn't part of the legion he worked with everyday people, the ones the church I knew often overlooked.

The man he was about to meet was s.

Juan Manuel Fernandez, a legendary priest very close to Marseille.

Fernandez once was the dean of one of the legionaries mostly universities in Mexico City.

He was recovering from a stroke and had been living at the Hospital Espanol.

That's where Atie went to visit him.

Fernande suggested they grabbed lunch across the street, small Spanish restaurant, cozy, familiar, the kind of place where the waiters knew Fernandez by name.

Mimbito comer Inferente by old Restaurante de Santander, Preciava locate and Los Piceos.

It was December Christmas lights hung from the windows.

They took a quiet table in the back.

Fernandez ordered one and a fish while he joked with the waiters.

Once the food arrived, Fernandez dropped the small talk.

He was shaking when he began to tell his story.

Lapreal comic Marcial Maziel Lepidiel in particular as far Marcius con drug as dolentina, injectava in Jactava or injectava and the land, the barrios Masile, drogado, variosias ast.

Fernandez told him that when he was just a teen, Marcile would send him to the pharmacy to get him do latina an opio being killer.

Then Marzielle would lie down in his bed, uncover his arm and asked Fernandez to inject him.

Sometimes Marzielle would pass out for days, and that was the best case Inario.

When he didn't pass out, something else happened.

He would ask Fernandez to stay and that's when the abuse began.

He get this pose or anti antis, he is spos aviient theedo relations.

The two men stopped eating, the fish went cold, their drinks untouched.

At first, Attia was dumbfounded.

He struggled to believe what he was hearing, not because it didn't sound true, but because it was too awful.

To imagine.

Your principio, the postion can only create ceramited.

As he watched him closely, Fernande's hands were shaking, his voice broken, and that's when the tears came, not quiet tears.

Right there in the middle of the restaurant, Fernandez was falling apart.

People.

A lot of other tables started to notice as he looked around uneasy.

He remembers thinking they are going to think I'm the one hurting him.

Loo avan donado totalmenti.

Siendo erra ermano and administered.

It broke him seeing him like that, so alone, so abandoned by the church they both served.

Fernandez was angry and hurt, but what he really wanted wasn't revenge.

It was peace.

He wanted to forgive and let go so he could die with his heat off his heart.

Maybe jo no mikiro morive massiel madistrui you know quiero marim resentmento orchis Christiano.

He told the TI he didn't want to die with presentment in his heart, that it wasn't Christian, But he also couldn't forget what had been done to him.

So right there in the Spanish restaurant, a team made a pact with him to walk beside him in this fight for justice, because companion is Atia promised he used the church's own system, its own rules to try and stop Marciel from within.

See you the compsticia a, then a theentroplicias not.

For party Nari massing combrado Mochiel Lora.

Adil had no way of knowing that the promise he made that day would be the start of a long, painful fight, one that would stretch across decades and shake his faith to the core.

My name is Helena Sada and this is secret scandal, the Many Secrets of Marseilles Massiel episode five, Forgiven but not Forgotten.

Adi was still a boy when he heard God calling him to something, not money, not success, but helping people.

He grew up in Mexico, where the church wasn't just a building, it was where people turned when there was nowhere else to go.

As a child, he watched priests fit the hungry, sit with the dying, listen to stories no one else had time to hear, and he thought, that's what I want to do.

Atia also was what many would call a modern priest.

He read the Bible, but also Nietzsche and Hermanhesse.

He admired priests like Gidalgo and Morellos, the rebels who helped start Mexico's independence, men of faith who didn't follow orders blindly, but used their privilege to speak up.

Atia believed in the church that if you follow the rules, if you told the truth, someone would listen.

Because the church at its core was supposed to stand with the vulnerable.

That's what he had seen, That's what he believed, so went for now.

When this told him he wanted justice, Adia didn't hesitate.

He planned to turn to the church's own rules because deep down he believed those laws would work, that they could punish the guilty and protect the vulnerable, and that maybe maybe redeemed the church from within.

Atia knew the process would belong, but what he didn't know was just how little time they actually had.

More on that after the break February nineteen ninety five, it was a cloudy Tuesday morning in Mexico City.

Adia was just waking up when the phone rang.

What he heard on the other side of the line made his heart drop.

Juan Manuel Fernandez had just died in a hospital in Mexico City.

It had been only two months since their launch at a Spanish restaurant, but death doesn't wait for plans to come together, and Fernande's clock had run out.

In his final weeks, Fernandez had been busy with his plans to seek justice, but he was also planning his own funeral.

The day they met He'd asked Atier for one last.

Favor, yourue les la misaacy.

Fernandez asked a tier to lead his funeral mass.

But there was something else.

A Tier was to deliver a message, one final truth he needed the world to hear.

The morning of the funeral, Atiyad dressed in silence, he slipped on his vestments, slowly, methodically.

Inside the chapel, it was still mourners building, quietly wrapped in dark cloaks.

The seats were filled with older men, many in their sixties.

Some were former legionaries, others were colleagues.

All of them knew him as a leader, a man of conviction.

None of them knew the secret he had carried for decades, but they were about to find out.

Attias stepped up to the altar.

He began the mass.

He moved through it with gear, each step measured.

Then became the pause, a long, heavy silence.

He looked out over the room.

He debated exactly how to say what he was about to say.

He wasn't sure how his words were land, but he knew he had to say them.

Did he mean.

Manuel Primero, the el pero pie Housticia.

Atier said it plainly, juile.

Manuel Fernandez had forgiven, but he was asking for justice.

No names, no explanations.

He didn't need to.

Those who knew knew.

He waited for the congregation of holy men to respond.

The room shifts.

Some men looked down, crying, others blushed, A few turned pale.

The room remained silent.

When Primero vis on rogando say rostos no there mas.

These were men who had followed Maseille defended him.

Some looked confused, but most understood exactly what had just been said.

When the ceremony was over, a man approached him.

As he loosened the collar from his neck.

He loo terminaldo la misa missa, and then demos perfect Manuel, almost vigilsie.

It was Jose Barva, you remember him from last episode, the former legionary who was assaulted by Marseille as a team.

The same man who, after surviving open heart surgery, decided he had to speak out.

Jose told that, ye, we understood the message perfectly.

We were also victims of Marseille.

They had never met before, but Joselva began to open up.

They agreed to meet again soon, somewhere they could talk with that rush.

At the ties When they finally.

Met to talk, Joseba didn't hold back.

His voice was calm, but the pain underneath was unmistakable, and as a till listened, his heart sank.

Everything Barba described much Fernande's story, the pain killers, the manipulation, the abuse, the same pattern, the same words, the same nightmare Fernandez had lived through.

I THEI realized something devastating.

Fernandez hadn't been the only one.

There were others, and now one of them was standing in front of him, asking him to join the fight.

Josel Arba looked at him and said they had to tell the world.

Jose told him that he was gathering stories, nine men in total, each with the same nightmare.

He needed every piece, every voice, to build something the church couldn't ignore, and he needed that he has helped to do it.

At that point in early nineteen ninety five, jose was still at the beginning of his mission.

This was before he contacted Jason Barry and the article at the Harvard Current.

Before everything, Josel was still collecting evidence.

He had tried to go to Mexican journalists, but none of them would touch the story.

Still, he was determined.

He wanted to expose Maseil and get justice for his victims.

But to do that, he needed more allies in the fight.

People like a Tier.

Medico oke to.

Periodicos I was inviting him to go public, to the press, to put his Fernandez testimony in writing and speak up, or a Tier hesitated.

Joy luar primero adentro poko promiti primero.

It wasn't fear holding him back.

Adia was a true believer in the church that the best way to bring Maciel down would be to use the church's own justice system to finally complain from the inside.

And now it wasn't just about Fernandez, it was a about all the other victims who was just beginning to learn about.

Ati promised he'd help.

He told use about to keep fighting from the outside, to go public, talk to the press, make the truth impossible to ignore.

But Atia was going to take another route when most people didn't even know existed, something called a canonical process.

And that's where the real fight was about to begin.

That's next after the break.

Before we go on, you might be wondering, if ATII and Josse had so many testimonies, why not skip the church and go straight to a real courtroom.

Why rely on the press or the Vatican.

Well, the problem was the timing.

According to Josebarba and the other victims, they'd been abused by Mazil between the fifties and the seventies.

They could have filed criminal charges at that time, but they didn't.

Back then, they were just boys twelve to seventeen.

Most of them were too scared.

Some didn't even fully understand what had happened to them.

By the nineties, the statue of limitations had passed.

That's the legal deadline for reporting a crime.

Once it runs out, the case can't be prosecuted in court, no matter how serious it is.

For all the abuse cases, it was too late.

That meant, if Atil wanted to bring down Mazielle, he had to do it by the church's rules.

It was nineteen ninety seven.

The Harvard Current had just published Jason Berry's article about the abuses, but in Mexico the church stayed silent.

Most people still saw Marselle as a saint, so Atia decided to start at the very top.

His first move was to go straight to the head of the Mexican Church, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, the Archbishop of Mexico City.

It was a long shot, a hail Mary, but it was the biggest door he could knock on, and he had to try.

A Tia arrived early for the meeting, a folded copy of the hard recurrent talked under his arm.

When Cardinal Rivetta walked in, Atia didn't waste time.

He spoke calmly, clearly, told him everything about Fernandez, about Barba, about the other victims.

He pleaded for action, speaking straight from the heart or Rivera brushed it off.

He waved his hand like swatting a fly.

Said the victims were just bitter, resentful, that this was nothing more than a mere campaign against the church, a conspiracy.

So complot.

Kevlar continuosa me coriopato.

The Cardinal slammed his hand on the table and a tear was kicked out of the office.

That was it.

Every other path had closed.

The courts couldn't touch Mosiel, the press wouldn't touch him.

No one in Mexico wanted to hear it.

The canonical process wasn't just the ideal option anymore.

It was the last upon left the Church's own legal system, the big gun.

But going after someone as powerful as Massiel through that system that was going to be complicated.

So what is the canonical process.

It's the Catholic Church's internal legal system.

Think of it like a medieval court room still operating today, a strict set of laws and procedures the Church has used for centuries to investigate and to judge its own priests.

It all starts with the testimony.

A victim steps forward and tells a story.

To a priest as a testimonial especial.

That priest then has to a believe you b champion your story and take it to his boss, a bishop.

If the bishop believes it's serious, he's supposed to open a case and send the report to the Vatican.

Then the Vatican decides whether the case should move forward.

So Atier figured, okay, slam dunk.

The testimonies were ready, pages and pages of different voices telling the same story.

The painkillers, the messages, the lie about the pope, the abuse, a clear pattern.

You just.

Mar lost testimonius.

Atier was already a priest, so in theory it should have been simple just hand the testimonist to a bishop, right, But here was a problem.

He needed a bishop who wasn't connected to Masiel and in Mexico.

That was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Masiell's people were everywhere, every office, every peerish, every corridor of power, well almost everywhere.

There was one bishop left in a small poor town in Vera, Cruz.

The bishop had connections and wanted to go straight to the Vatican, but he warned that, ye, we need one more person on board first.

The man known as God's roth Weiler is to.

Colicos Los jev Perfect the Congression, Joseph Ratting.

Joseph Ratzinger.

You might know him as the future Pope Benedict.

He was a Vatican's watchdog, in charge of keeping church doctoring in line.

He was known for his strict sense of justice.

It's why they call him God's rod Weiler.

Once he got hold of a problem, he wouldn't let it go.

No one had more authority inside the church except the Pope.

If anyone could stop Moselle, it was him.

In nineteen ninety nine, the bishop flew to the Vatican and walked into Ratzinger's office, high ceilings, stone floors, whilst lined with books, the airs smelt like old paper, and after greeting reassenger, the bishop handed him the letter and quietly waited.

Reser began reading.

No reaction at first, just his eyes scanning the pages one by one.

He didn't ask where, since he didn't look up, but something shifted in his face.

His skin lost the little color, his lips tightened.

What he read shook him, not dramatically, but in that subtle Vatican way.

He held the pages a second too long, like he didn't know where to set them down, like he was holding a bomb.

And then finally he.

Spoke, lolamiell no il parimachiell is carrioi.

I'm very sorry, Father Masiele's case cannot be opened.

Ratzinger told the bishop, Masiel is very dear to the Pope.

The legioniars bringing a lot of young people, and not only that she in mucho dinero.

Mazielle also brought in money, a lot of money that made him too powerful to touch.

The Bishop could tell that was saying this through gritted teeth, that he was hiding something said.

His hands were tied, but it wouldn't stay that way forever, because a few years later was going to get more powerful than anyone in the church.

And then he did.

He wouldn't forget Mazielle, but for now he couldn't do anything.

When the Bishop called a Tie to tell him what had happened, at Ye couldn't believe it.

All the effort, all those testimonies shut down in a single conversation.

A TI tried to convince the Bishop to keep going, to push harder.

He reminded him of everything Monsieur had done.

The drugs, the manipulation, the abuse.

This wasn't just a scandal, it was a sin, a crime.

But the doors in Rome had closed.

The Bishop was out of moves, and he thought back to that lunch at a Spanish restaurant, to the way Fernandez had cried, broken down, to the promise he made that day.

Justice.

It seemed impossible.

Now.

He had knocked on every door that mattered, the Vatican, the bishops, the biggest name in Mexico, and every single one had shut him out.

The church he had served for decades, the one he had fallen in love with as a boy.

When he saw priests feeding the hungry and sitting with the dying, felt like it didn't exist anymore.

He tried to carry on, to keep his faith intact, but something had cracked Every prayer every mass carried the shadow of what he had seen.

Then months later, something strange happened.

He was someone back to Colonel Rivetta's office, the same man who had slammed his hand on the table and thrown him out of his office for bringing up Moseielle, this time at the priest himself for the worst.

Maybe he was going to be punished, sent away, expelled from the church.

But Rivera had something else in mind, a promotion.

Le medici Alberto i atro.

Me not Vera told him there were people in Rome who wanted to make him a bishop, but it wouldn't happen without his blessing, and that blessing came with the price silence.

It was a golden ticket, a new title, power, security for life, and all he had to do was stop asking questions.

But Atia's result was bulletproof.

Significant.

She lets you no quentic mino.

He hadn't come this far to treat truth for status, not after everything he'd seen, And that was the moment a Ta understood something I had always known.

Massier was untouchable.

He had been protected my whole life, by bishops, by cardinals, by the Pope himself.

He'd seen it from the inside, the way any accusation would vanish like smoke.

And now at Tia was seeing it too, not as a rumor, not as suspicion, but in the flesh.

For me, it was confirmation.

For him, it was the beginning of the end.

At this state in the church for three more years.

Then in two thousand and three, he was in Chicago when another scandal broke, another case of priest abusing children, different names, different cities, the same audacity, And this time he couldn't just watch from the sidelines.

He realized it wasn't just about Masiell.

It was everywhere, a rod that ran through the whole institution.

So one night he cleared the table, sat down.

He pulled out a single sheet of paper, smoothed it with his hands, and began to write a letter to the Pope.

Is Karta uh compulvenuso re VOCALI mine a leisterio tocados it does porque prolemas torturalmente existing in Likelysia, Catolica.

And Alissa.

To JOHNO.

Brett and all, he wrote, I irrevocably resigned from the priesthood for two reasons.

First, because there are abusers who remain untouched.

And second because the problem is structural within the Catholic Church and no one wants to face it.

I have no intention of belonging to such an institution.

Albertotier walked away from the priesthood, but he never walked away from the fight.

If anything, living made him louder, he told his story in every place that will listen, interviews, reports, documentaries, podcasts, including this one, because once you see the truth, you can't unsee it, and for some of facing that truth means leading everything behind.

In the next episode, I decide to leave two.

That's next on Sacred Scandal.

Sacred Scandal The Many Secrets of Marcelle Masel is a production of a HAA podcast in partnership with Iheartmichael Doula podcast Network, and is hosted by me Elena Sada, written by Menissa Hendrix and Alvaalo saz Pedes, Produced by Alvaalo ses Pedes and Robert Tagarza.

Research and reporting by Robert Tagarza, edited by Jasmine Rometo with the help of Carmen grat Roy.

Fact checking by Annapla.

Dovar, The vocal coach for me Elena Sada is Inadapia Executive producers at a Half Podcast are Carmen Gradd, 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.

Sircar Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Varos