Priest shocks elite seminary by admitting to secret family

THE former rector of a prominent Legion of Christ seminary in Rome is leaving the priesthood after admitting to having a secret family, which he concealed from authorities for years.

The conservative Catholic order announced this weekend that Father Oscar Turrion, a 49-year-old Spanish priest who became rector of the Pontifical Maria Mater Ecclesiae International College in Rome in 2014, will leave the priestly ministry in order to dedicate more time to a family he has raised clandestinely until now.

In March, Father Turrion told his superiors at the college, which houses around 100 male diocesan seminarians, that he had fathered a daughter.

As Roman Catholic priests are bound to a vow of celibacy, the order offered him a “period of reflection,” and then in August appointed a substitute rector. The Legion revealed this week that Father Turrion told authorities in a letter he had decided to leave the ministry after admitting that his infant daughter is in fact his second child.

He fell in love with a woman several years ago when the order was going through a period of turmoil and kept their first child, a son born eight years ago, and his ongoing relationship, a secret for years, including when he was being considered for rector.

In a letter released by the Legion, Turrion asked for prayers and “forgiveness for the scandal … for my bad example.”

The shock revelation has rattled the institution, which said in a statement it was saddened and “conscious of the impact that the negative example” had set to seminarians and the Christian faithful.