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The girls said the program's directors and counselors read and withheld the girls' mail, barred close friendships, isolated the girls from their families 49 weeks a year and insisted that they confide only in them. That garnered the girls' trust but also gave directors an easy way to manipulate those they wanted to keep on as potential consecrated leaders and those they decided didn't have a vocation and should go home. The head of the consecrated women in the United States, Monica Trevino, said in a statement she was "saddened to think that some of the former pre-candidates were hurt, and I would love for us to be able to reach out to them and for them to have peace that some of these changes are in fact being made." On the same day Regnum Christi announced the reforms in its precandidacy program, De Paolis issued an update of his own about the reform process, turning his attention for the first time to Regnum Christi. He said the movement's actual identity needed to be defined, as well as its relationship with the broader Legion. And he announced a historical review of the origins of the movement, which claims thousands of members around the globe. Maciel, who founded the Legion in Mexico in 1941, modeled Regnum Christi after Opus Dei, the conservative movement founded in Spain that is made up of priests and lay Catholics who devote varying amounts of their time and money to Opus Dei's mission of sanctifying everyday work. One of the main tasks De Paolis has been shepherding through is a defining of its essential spirit, or charism, that makes the Legion unique and inspires it. The lack of a clearly defined charism has bedeviled the Legion for years and led many critics to question whether the order can and should survive. De Paolis reported that two years into the reform process, Legionary priests needed more time to reflect on their charism, and that both the Legion and Regnum Christi would study it together. ___ Online Regnum Christi:
www.regnumchristi.org/
[Associated
Press;
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