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Legion priest who resigned after fathering child to marry daughter of top Vatican adviser

Associated Press
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FILE -- In this 2011 file picture, Father Thomas Williams gestures during a meeting in Rome. Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned. The bride is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, the highest-ranking woman at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Giulio Riotta) (The Associated Press)

FILE - In this Feb. 29, 2008 file photo released by the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano newspaper, Pope Benedict XVI, left, looks on with Washington's new ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, before receiving her credentials at the Vatican. Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned Thursday, Dec. 5, 2013. The bride is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, the highest-ranking woman at the Vatican. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano, ho, files) (The Associated Press)

FILE -- In this 2011 file picture, Father Thomas Williams gestures during a meeting in Rome. Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned. The bride is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, the highest-ranking woman at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Giulio Riotta) (The Associated Press)

The Associated Press has learned that a former top official at the Legion of Christ, who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a son, is marrying the child's mother this weekend. The bride is the daughter of the former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, one of Pope Francis' top advisers.

Thomas Williams, a moral theologian and U.S. television personality, is marrying Elizabeth Lev, a Rome-based art historian and columnist for a religious news agency that Williams published.

Lev's mother is Mary Ann Glendon, one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican.

The wedding raises uncomfortable questions about who in the church knew about the child, and Glendon's ties to Williams influenced her defense of the Legion despite credible reports that its founder was a pedophile.