By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Writer One of the most thriving orders in the Catholic Church today, the Legionaries of Christ, has been given a heavy cross to carry since learning that in addition to allegations of having sexually abused young men, their founder, Rev. Marcial Maciel Degallado, also had an affair with a woman and fathered a child.  "We have learned some things about our founder's life that are surprising and difficult for us to understand,” said Jim Fair, a spokesman for the order. “We can confirm that there are some aspects of his life that were not appropriate for a Catholic priest." The first accusations against Fr. Maciel surfaced in 1998 when more than a dozen men accused him of sexually abusing them when they were students. As a result, Pope Benedict XVI ordered him to leave public ministry several years ago.  Father Maciel died in January, 2008, at the age of 87, and was buried in Mexico, where he was born. However, it has since been revealed that Fr. Maciel also had a mistress with whom he had a daughter who is now in her early 20’s. It is possible that there may be a second child but this has not been confirmed. The Legion’s Rome spokesman, Father Paolo Scarafoni, said: "We cannot deny the existence of these facts but we can't go into detail because we have to respect the privacy of people involved." Now the order's general director, the Rev. Álvaro Corcuera, is quietly visiting its religious communities and seminaries in the United States and informing members that their founder led a double life. Some are speculating about whether or not the order will renounce its founder, but Fair said: "He is the founder and he always will be the founder of the order. That's one of the mysteries that we all see in life is that sometimes good things come out of less than perfect human beings." One former Legionarie, Fr. Stephen Fichter, who left the order 14 years ago, said Fr. Maciel was always treated like some kind of mythical hero. "When you become a Legionarie, you have to read every letter Father Maciel ever wrote, like 15 or 16 volumes." Father Fichter, once the chief financial officer for the order, said he had informed the Vatican three years ago that every time Father Maciel left Rome, "I always had to give him $10,000 in cash - $5,000 in American dollars and $5,000 in the currency of wherever he was going." Father Fichter added: "As Legionaries, we were taught a very strict poverty; if I went out of town and bought a Bic pen and a chocolate bar, I would have to turn in the receipts. And yet for Father Maciel there was never any accounting. It was always cash, never any paper trail. And because he was this incredible hero to us, we never even questioned it for a second." The Legionaries, founded in 1941, have grown even while the Church is shrinking in many countries. It has 800 priests in 22 countries, and 70,000 members worldwide, many of whom are lay people in its affiliate, Regnum Christi. "God does good sometimes through really flawed people," Fair said, and insisted that the work of the order would continue. © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly/Women of Grace. http://www.womenofgrace.com