Pope Benedict XVI receives Fr Alvaro Corcuera, LC, in private audience. June 16, 2006 (©L'Osservatore Romano).

The current general director of the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi is Father Álvaro Corcuera, LC. During the celebration of the General Chapter in January, 2005 in Rome, Father Marcial Maciel, LC, founder of the congregation, declined his reelection as general director. In a new vote, Father Álvaro Corcuera, LC, was elected. He had been rector of the Legionary Center for Higher Studies in Rome from 1987 up to that point.

Biography

Father Álvaro Corcuera Martínez del Río was born on July 22nd, 1957, in Mexico City. His parents are Pablo L. Corcuera García Pimentel and Ana Francisca Martínez del Río Fernández de Henestrosa de Corcuera. He was baptized four days later at Christ the King and St. Monica Parish.

He studied at the Cumbres Institute (Instituto Cumbres) and was one of the founding students at the Legion’s Irish Institute in Mexico City.

In 1969, Álvaro traveled to Ireland along with a few other companions to form the founding group of the Legion´s language academy now called Dublin Oak. It was during his stay in Dublin that he had his first inklings of a priestly vocation.

On June 27th, 1971, Álvaro Corcuera became one of the founding members of the youth group of ECYD (Education, Culture, and Youth Development).

Later he became a member of Regnum Christi on May 5th, 1974. Among other activities that year, he participated in a course in Reajo del Roble (Madrid, Spain). It was here that he first thought of becoming a consecrated layman in Regnum Christi, a step he finally took on April 13th, 1975.

Seven years later, reflecting on his consecration, he said, “Joining Regnum Christi made me see that self-giving to Christ, wherever it might be, was the best gift that I could desire. Consecrated life was an experience that I could never completely assimilate because of its depth and greatness. It is a great gift.”

In 1975, he began studying for a degree in education at Anahuac University (Universidad Anáhuac) in Mexico City, and graduated in 1979.

Álvaro

	Father Álvaro Corcuera, LC, greets Pope John Paul II along with Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

and several other consecrated members of Regnum Christi volunteered as aides for Pope John Paul II’s first visit to Mexico in January of 1979.

In September of that same year, Álvaro joined the Legion of Christ as a novice. A year later, when asked about his motivation to make the decision, and he replied: “I discovered the main reason in the tabernacle, where you hear Christ’s call, ´Come, follow me. Leave everything and surrender yourself completely.´”

He did his ecclesiastical studies in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (The Angelicum).

He was ordained a deacon in Rome, on June 29th, 1985, by Archbishop Santos Abril y Castelló, then apostolic nuncio to Bolivia. On Christmas Eve that same year he was ordained a priest in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Rome by Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, then prefect of the Vatican department that is now called the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Father Álvaro earned a licentiate degree in philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He served as rector of the Center for Higher Studies in Rome from 1987 until his election as general director of the Legion and the Regnum Christi.

He was the founding rector of the Regina Apostolorum University in Rome, from its establishment in September 1993 until the end of the 1999-2000 school year. During that period he served as secretary of the Committee of Rectors of the Pontifical Universities of Rome. On December 7th, 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Anahuac University (Universidad Anáhuac) in Mexico City.

On April 20th, 2001, the

	On December 24, 1985, Father Álvaro Corcuera, L.C., is ordained a priest by Cardinal Eduardo Martínez Somalo

Holy See appointed him a consultant to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops. And on January 2005 he was elected general director of the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ and the Regnum Christi Movement by the Third Ordinary General Chapter of the congregation.