The death has taken place of Fr Anthony Bannon (74), who was born in Dublin and went on to become a senior figure in the controversial Catholic order, the Legionaries of Christ.
Fr Bannon, who died on Thursday, was the Legionaries territorial director of North America from 1988 to 2004, and the territorial director’s assistant for religious life in North America from 2005 to 2008, according to the order.
He was the superior for the apostolate community in Dublin from 2011 to 2013 and went to Mexico City in 2014 to be the men’s section director of Regnum Christi, the order’s organisation for lay members. In March 2019, he moved to England for health reasons.
The Legion was founded in Mexico in 1941 by Fr Marcial Maciel, who served as its general director until he was forced to step down in January 2005.
Investigations by the Vatican and eventually by the order itself concluded that Fr Maciel, who died in 2008, had sexually abused tens of children, including children he had fathered in a number of relationships.
The order also eventually admitted that other priests had also been involved in the sexual abuse of minors, and that the order, whose members took vows of secrecy, had tried to cover up the scandal.
In 2017 The Irish Times reported that Fr Bannon and Fr Maciel (who has never been defrocked) were involved in offshore structures used by the order to manage its considerable wealth.
Leaked documents in the ICIJ project, the Paradise Papers, showed Fr Bannon and Fr Maciel were involved with two companies in Bermuda linked to the order’s assets, while Bannon was also named as a director of three companies based in Panama.
‘One of the big men’ of order
At the time of a reports a Dublin priest and former member of the order, Fr Peter Byrne, said Fr Maciel was as "a gangster from the outset. A sociopath. He had a capacity to assume identities, tell lies, fool people."
Fr Byrne, who joined the order in 1978 after it organised retreats for students of Dublin’s Synge Street School, said it was like “a cult” and that Fr Bannon was “one of the big men” in the order and highly regarded by its founder.
Paul Lennon, a native of Cabra in Dublin who joined the Legion in 1961, said Maciel was "probably the best Catholic fundraiser of the 20th century. They have a huge financial empire."
Fr Bannon featured in a number of court judgments in Rhode Island in the US a number of years ago, in a case where he was the executor of the will of a wealthy widow who, it was alleged, had come under undue influence from the order. The legal effort to have her will overturned failed.
The case involved the estate of Gabrielle Mee, who died leaving $60 million (€51.5m) to the Legion in the US. Fr Bannon had power of attorney over her affairs while she was still alive.
Mee became a “consecrated woman” with the Legion’s lay organisation Regnum Christi and died in a facility run by the order.
There was no mention of Fr Bannon’s involvement in the order’s financial affairs in the report on his death carried on the Legion’s website.
It said his hard work helped the Legionaries to flourish in North America and that he also helped to start foundations in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and South Korea.
“While in the United States, he helped guide many young men in vocational discernment to the priesthood and religious life as well as to future holy marriages.”
There is a link to a YouTube video about Fr Bannon on the website, which details his life and work, but does not mention the Legion's founder.
