In God's House (35 page)

There it was, all the evidence anyone needed. As Matt rowed toward land, Sasha sat in the front of the little boat, her arms crossed, her posture defiant. If she had not been caught
red-handed
, she was red-faced.

Shelby laughed. “Come on, kid, how’d you get that thing way out there? You gotta tell us now.”

“I don’t have to tell nobody nothing,” Sasha said. “Whoever stole it, threw it in the pond. They musta been mean people, mean as you, Jake, mean as you, Shelby. Maybe it was you, Jake, or maybe it was you, Shelby.”

Sunday afternoon, after everyone had given Matt and Des tight hugs and made them promise they would return to Coteau, the three of us set off in my car for a tour. First, I drove them down to Cypress Bay and through Dubois’s former parish, Our Lady of the Seas. Then we toured Bayou Saint John and drove on to Thiberville, passing Bendel’s office before stopping at Saint Stephen’s Cathedral and its chancery. Inside the big church, I watched as the two men walked over to a side altar with a statue of the Holy Mother. They stood silently side by side for a few minutes before turning for the door.

Matt and I dropped Des off at Thiberville airport. He had an early-morning meeting scheduled for the next day at the papal nunciature in Washington. When he said goodbye, he added, “I really wish I could be going with you guys.”

Matt and I were on our way to the center of the state, to Morgan’s Hope, for a meeting with Iris and Willifred Dubois and their children and spouses of their children. I had set up the appointment earlier in the week, at Matt’s request. “I want to see Iris Dubois,” he’d said. “Dubois’s whole family, Ren. I just want to sit with them. Listen. I know there’s nothing I can do or say that can change anything. I can’t be a comfort to them. But they will know someone understands their pain and cares about them. If they still pray, maybe we will pray together for healing all who are involved – the children, their families, Francis and the Dubois family. I know their pain will never end. I just want to sit with them, ya know.”

Ricardo Ponce and Brent Thomas barged into Jon Bendel’s office. Ponce glared at the diocesan lawyer and threw a copy of the motion to set each of their ten cases for trial onto his desk.

Brent Thomas was a nervous wreck. He knew if the families were advised that there would be a public court trial, five of the ten sets of parents would fold their hands and force Brent to dismiss their lawsuits, costing the young lawyers a million in fees.

Though they had argued over the weekend on the phone, Brent Thomas had not been able to hold Ricardo Ponce off any longer. Ponce had driven in from Florida Monday night.

Pointing to the legal papers he had slammed onto Bendel’s desk, Ponce exploded. “We’re gonna lift the seals on these ten lawsuits and file for trial dates. We’ll have a press conference to discuss the 3.6 million dollars that covering up the crimes of Father Dubois has already cost the diocese, revealing the terms of the Halloween Settlement. The language of that compromise binds our clients to silence. But it does not gag me.”

Jonathan Bendel knew his response would be a lie, but he was not sure what the lie would be. He did not want people to know millions had already been paid, especially lawyers who were filing new lawsuits and had no idea what the value of their claims was. Bendel also knew that Blassingame did not want to shell out six million more dollars of insurance money to settle the ten Ponce–Thomas cases. Blassingame’s law associates and paralegals had
been poring over the language of the insurance policies, devising arguments to the effect that the diocese was obligated to make a large contribution to the settlement of the new set of eleven lawsuits. And new lawsuits were being filed against Dubois and other priests weekly. Bendel didn’t want Ricardo Ponce grandstanding like Kane Chaisson for television cameras.

“I need time, fellows,” Bendel said.

“You’ve had a year to come up with our six million,” Ponce said.

“Yes, and I need more time. I know you two guys need six hundred thousand for each case. Ten lawsuits, and that’s six million, but that kind of money isn’t lying around anywhere. The problem is pulling the money together. I have half of it, three million,” Bendel lied. “But three million won’t do you any good, I know. I understand you have to settle all the cases at one time.”

Ponce almost spat as he spoke. “Kane Chaisson filed for the first available guaranteed trial date and that date is six months away. If we move to set ten cases on the trial calendar, we will probably have to wait more than a year to get into court. Another year, on top of the year we’ve already wasted.”

Scrambling to find some running room, Bendel lied again as he probed the greed of these two young barristers. “One way to look at this is that I have three million together, so you guys already have a guaranteed million in fees, in the bank.”

Ponce scoffed, “I don’t have a million anything.”

“We can arrange a line of credit for you. I sit on the board of Southern National Bank. I can call the president and we can pledge your fee in these cases against a line of credit. You could draw down, say, a half million or maybe three-quarters of a million in legal fees right now, today, use it as you wish.”

Brent Thomas said, “It wouldn’t be ethical for us to be drawing down any portion of our legal fees before our clients get their money.”

Ricardo wanted to slap the piss out of Thomas, but he remained stone-faced.

The meeting ended with Ponce saying, “You do whatever it is you think you should do, Jon. I’m going back to Florida. I’ll be sailing all week. The Monday after Easter, Brent will file the motion to set these ten cases for trial. We’ll have a press conference about these ten pending cases and the Halloween Settlement. You have until then to finish business, not a minute more.”

I had flown back to Washington with Matt on Monday night. The nunciature was closed for the week. Most of the Italian employees were in their home country on holiday. By mid-week, Matt and I were working with Desmond at the embassy, preparing the first draft of a manual of policies and procedures that Cardinal Laurence was to present to all four hundred members of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Only the nuns who took care of the kitchen and cleaning were in the grand residence. Much to the consternation of Sister Theresa, the head honcho, we insisted on taking some of our meals in the kitchen rather than the formal dining room. Whenever we were asked about a menu, Des told them to prepare their favorite dishes. We had piles of Venetian ravioli, great bread, fabulous soups and a Tuscan bean casserole.

Sister Theresa blushed the first time we asked her to have the nuns join us for lunch in the formal dining room. Desmond placed her in the seat of honor, the big chair normally reserved for the papal nuncio. It took a while, but eventually the four nuns became pretty gregarious, except for the two who were shy about expressing themselves in English.

I asked them to tell us where their homes were, to tell us something about the places where they’d grown up. Sister Theresa said, “In our village near Montepulciano we have donkeys in the street and they are for no good, for nothing. No one uses the
donkeys. They live and sleep in the street. They ate the grass so many times in the big park that the men put stones down.”

“Why doesn’t someone take the donkeys out of the village?” I asked.

“The donkeys are the only thing my village is known for. It’s the donkey place. If you take the donkeys out of the village, it will be known for nothing. It will be no place.”

I thought Sister Theresa would have a heart attack when she saw me dump vanilla ice cream into a glass and pour a Coke over it. All the little nuns giggled as I unsuccessfully attempted to have them taste this uniquely American drink. They even seemed to think the phrase “Coke float” was funny. Sister Theresa was the only one who became converted to Coke floats, and that wasn’t the only bad habit we passed on to her. Des broke into the private stock of the papal nuncio and presented them all with Cuban cigars. They laughed uproariously and handed the stogies back, all except for Sister Theresa, who slipped hers beneath her nun’s habit.

When I called to check in with my office in Thiberville, Mo told me that DA Sean Robinette was looking for me. There it was: the criminal case of the State of Louisiana versus Father Francis Dubois. It had been months since anything had happened with the civil lawsuits or the criminal prosecution. The Dubois matter had been like a bag of snakes resting in the corner of my mind. All these months, I knew it would never go away, but I was not about to kick the bag.

Des showed me to an empty office with a phone on the desk. Sean came on the line.

“There’s some news this morning. Kane Chaisson’s date for the trial of the Rachou case is set for Monday September 23. It’s a first fixing. There’s nothing going to stop the Rachou trial from going down on that date. I’ve been waiting for Chaisson to make his move. I want his trial first for a lot of reasons. I’ve cleared the date of Monday October 28, for our case, State versus Dubois.”

I only said, “Okay, seeya,” and rang off. I suspected Sean knew the truth. I had nothing to talk about. I had no defense for Dubois, none.

On Saturday, when the three of us had finished our work on the document we wanted Cardinal Laurence to present to the Conference of Bishops, Des had called Cardinal Laurence in Atlanta. He was advised to have Bishop Garland Franklin vet the document before presenting it to the cardinal. Des had had a large envelope messengered to Franklin’s rectory and a meeting was set for Sunday afternoon. Matt drove the three of us to Baltimore.

In the year since Bishop Franklin had been appointed by the Vatican to monitor, assist in managing problems, and report to the Vatican on the clergy abuse situation, he had limited his interaction with Des, Matt and me, pretty much ignoring me entirely.

At the rectory, a short fat father pointed the way to Bishop Franklin’s office. The bishop had a copy of our proposal in his hands. I wasn’t in the chair before the bishop began beating up on our work. “I see some huge problems with the proposal. I called Cardinal Laurence last night and read one section to him about the theories of civil liability, the legal basis for finding a diocese or bishop liable to a plaintiff for damages awarded by a judge or jury. He concurs with me that he thinks that section is way too technical.”

Bishop Franklin drank from his water glass, acting as if he was being tape-recorded. “There are also sections about canon law and passages about clinical factors that are too dense for the purposes of those who will read this proposal and vote on it.”

Matt, ever the diplomat, said, “Your Excellency, we can make the document easier to read and understand. We will do a revision.”

“That’s fine,” Bishop Franklin said. “Now, the second problem is the recommendations this proposal makes to the Conference of Bishops.”

The bishop referred to a set of handwritten notes on his desk. “The idea of a long-term policy committee is a good one, but you need to drop the word ‘planning’ from the title and body of the discussion. The word implies that the Church is anticipating problems of this kind to arise in its midst.”

The bishop put on glasses and pulled his handwritten notes off the table. It seemed he was finding his own handwriting indecipherable. He took his glasses off and scowled at all three of us.

“Establish central record-keeping for cases of clergy sex abuse? That’s an idea whose time will never come. Strike this. I have some ideas about records I will mention shortly. And gentlemen, this Church is never going to practice full disclosure or transparency in these matters. We will not have press conferences about problems within the Church. The media will never cross the line into the Church’s affairs. Giving the accused priest a canon lawyer and civil lawyer is a good idea, if those lawyers advise him to shut up and stay shut up. That didn’t happen in Louisiana, did it? No, Mr. Chattelrault had his client talk, confess.”

I said nothing in response to his shot at me because I did not trust what might come out of my mouth, and I wanted to hear the rest of his comments on our proposal.

“There are not ever going to be search-and-destroy teams in any diocese looking for victims of Catholic priests, and no one is ever going to advise a victim or a victim’s parents that they can sue the Church or jail a priest. This is not going to happen. No use proposing it.”

He again glanced at his notes. “Now, this intervention team is a good idea, and I understand the three of you are doing this on your own, informally, without any sponsor or support. That’s commendable. However, if there’s to be any mention of this at all in the document, the word ‘crisis’ will have to be struck from the
title and body of the document. That word implies there is some kind of crisis presently; if the proposal were adopted, the bishops would then be acknowledging that a problem of crisis proportions existed. Instead it should imply that this is something the Church wishes to research in regard to the safety of children and the
well-being
of its priests.”

Des was squirming in his chair.

Matt took the floor. “Bishop, we will discuss all the things you have shared with us, await a reading by Cardinal Laurence, and address them when the document is revised.”

Bishop Franklin nodded, sipped his water and seemed satisfied that he had straightened us out, the unholy trio. His eyes got brighter and he smiled for the first time.

“Gentlemen, I think I have a one-shot solution to this problem. A kill shot. I was down in Louisiana and I learned a lot there. What caused them the biggest problem down there was the personnel records of the priests. It was badly mismanaged. We know our Church keeps detailed records of what we call ‘delicts’ in canon law – offenses priests commit – and the records are filed in the secret archives. These records can come back and bury us. Some files were sanitized in Louisiana, damaging information was removed and shredded, and that might have been illegal. It was close to the line, for sure.”

The bishop looked hard at me and I imagined the revised history in the Thiberville diocese had me alone advocating the destruction of personnel files. Maybe they’d even told him I did the shredding of the documents.

The bishop excused himself and returned with a tall glass of something that appeared to be Gatorade. He offered us nothing.

“So what can be done to solve the problem of these records? We cannot destroy them. It’s a violation of law to destroy them if they are under subpoena, but more important than that is the fact that the bishops and dioceses need these secret archives to evaluate priests. What we need to do is prepare a memorandum to all bishops in the United States advising them that the papal
nunciature is available for central storage of any and all diocesan records. Verbally, we get the word to the bishops that we are referring only to files that may contain evidence of criminal conduct on the part of a priest.”

Des shifted in his chair, clearing his throat. “What are you suggesting?”

“Documents on file at the papal nunciature are on the grounds of a foreign embassy. Because of diplomatic immunity, the records are immune from both civil and criminal subpoena. If no lawyer can access that information, then our problems will lessen to the point where it will be too much trouble for a district attorney to prosecute a priest criminally or for a plaintiff lawyer to pursue a diocese for damages with a civil suit.”

Des’s jaw clenched. “Bishop Franklin, you are suggesting using the diplomatic immunity status of the Vatican Embassy to obstruct justice in the United States. The diplomatic mission could be expelled from this country if it were proved we used our embassy to hide information in contravention of US laws. This would be illegal, unsound and immoral in my view.”