Luis Garza Medina is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

priest of the

Legion of Christ The Legionaries of Christ (in , abbreviated L.C.) is a Catholic Church, Roman Catholic religious congregation of pontifical right founded on January 3, 1941, by the Mexican Catholic priest Marcial Maciel. It belongs constitutively to the spiritua ...

who previously served as its

Vicar General A vicar general (previously, archdeacon) is the principal deputy of the bishop or archbishop of a diocese or an archdiocese for the exercise of administrative authority and possesses the title of local ordinary. As vicar of the bishop, the vica ...

, Territorial Director of North America, and Spiritual Director in

Manila, Philippines Manila, officially the City of Manila, is the capital and second-most populous city of the Philippines after Quezon City, with a population of 1,846,513 people in 2020. Located on the eastern shore of Manila Bay on the island of Luzon, it is ...

. Medina currently resides in Monterrey, Mexico.

Biography

Garza was born and raised in

Monterrey Monterrey (, , abbreviated as MtY) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León. It is the ninth-largest city and the second largest metropolitan area, after Greater Mexico City. Located at the foothills of th ...

, Mexico. He has a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. He entered the Legion of Christ in 1978. Garza was Vicar General of the Legion from 1992 until 2011. In 2006, Garza investigated serious charges of sexual abuse of minors by Legion founder

Marcial Maciel Marcial Maciel Degollado (March 10, 1920 – January 30, 2008) was a Mexican Catholic priest who founded the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement. He was general director of the Legion from 1941 to 2005. Throughout most of his ca ...

, which were later verified. Garza left the post of Vicar General in 2011 in order to take up the role of Territorial Director for North America. From 2014 to 2016 he was a local apostolate coordinator of Everest Academy in Manila, Philippines. His older brother Dionisio Garza Medina is the CEO of Tenedora Topaz. His younger sister Roberta Garza Medina is the editor of ''

Milenio ''Milenio'' is a major national newspaper in Mexico, owned by Grupo Multimedios. It is published in 11 cities across Mexico, including Monterrey, Mexico City, Guadalajara, León, Pachuca, Puebla, Villahermosa, Tampico, Torreón, Toluca, an ...

'' magazine in Mexico City.

Controversies

In a civil lawsuit that was later dropped, Garza was listed among the accused of alleged sexual abuse of teenage boy in the early 1990s. Following up on these accusations, the Legion of Christ carried out a canonical investigation entrusted to an independent investigator who concluded that "the accusations against Father Luis Garza were not credible," and that he should be "free from suspicion and should not be restricted in any way in the exercise of his priestly ministry." Garza was named in the

Pandora Papers The Pandora Papers are 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 ...

, where it was reported that he had $300 Million in trusts in New Zealand under his name.

Notes

External links

Regnum Christi announcement of Garza's appointment to head North American Region''Vatican Insider'' article on Garza's resignationJason Berry "How Father Maciel Built His Empire" ''National Catholic Reporter'' Apr 12, 2010
*[https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/legion-of-christ-us-property-evictions-offshore/ Spencer Woodman "As Catholic order fought sex abuse claims, secret trusts devoted to it poured millions into American rental properties" ''Miami Herald'' October 5, 2021]
"Fr. Luis Medina Garza Biography"
[ ategory:Mexican expatriates in the Philippines Living people Mexican Roman Catholic priests Stanford University alumni Clergy from Monterrey Mexican expatriates in the United States Year of birth missing (living people) {{RC-clergy-stub