VATICAN CITY (RNS) A prominent member of a conservative Catholic movement confirmed that the movement’s founder had fathered at least one illegitimate child and sexually molested teenage boys.

The admissions concerned the late Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legion of Christ and its affiliated lay movement, Regnum Christi.

An internal Legion investigation has determined that Maciel “fathered a child, who is now in her early 20s,” the Rev. Thomas D. Williams wrote in an e-mail message to the Our Sunday Visitor blog on Thursday (Feb. 5).

An American who teaches theology at the Legion’s Regina Apostolorum University in Rome, Williams is also a regular analyst for CBS television.

Previously, spokesmen for the movement had acknowledged only unspecified acts by Maciel that were “not appropriate for a Catholic priest.”

In 2006, two years before his death, Maciel was disciplined by Pope Benedict XVI amid charges that he had sexually abused boys studying to become priests under his authority.

Although the Legion’s own investigation has not verified all the sex abuse charges, Williams wrote, “what seems evident is that some of them must indeed be true.”

The Legion of Christ (or Legionaries of Christ), which enjoyed Vatican favor under Pope John Paul II, claims more than 700 priests and 2,500 seminarians in 40 countries, including at least 75 priests in the United States. Regnum Christi reportedly has some 60,000 lay members.

Williams said that the movement would continue to be guided by Maciel’s writings, but suggested that the founder would no longer serve as a spiritual or moral exemplar for members.

“We have already begun moving his pictures from the walls,” he wrote.