Render Unto Rome (42 page)

The more than 20 percent jump in parishes operating in the red shows the wealth was not evenly shared. Many parishes in cities or inner-ring suburbs trying to hold on to their elementary schools face a particularly difficult road. The mixed financial results come as the diocese is going through an extensive process … in which all parishes will be placed in a cluster with up to five other churches.

The clusters will work on plans for shared ministry. The changes could range from staggered Mass times to the closing or mergers of some parishes and schools.
⁵

On January 16, 2007, the PBS series
Frontline
aired a documentary by Joe Cultrera,
Hand of God
, that followed the Boston crisis through the long impact on Cultrera’s family, from his brother’s childhood abuse by a priest through his parents’ despair as the archdiocese closed their parish in Salem. As Bill Sheil watched the film, the reporter-anchorman was mesmerized by a sequence that opens with Lennon, in a Roman collar, smothering the lens with his hands. After watching the film, Sheil secured permission to air the scene on Fox 8, which ended Lennon’s honeymoon with the Cleveland media.

As Lennon backs away from the camera, a short, bearded guy in a baseball cap enters the viewfinder: Joe Cultrera, with the Boston chancery building in the background. Cultrera tells Lennon, “I’m doing a film here. Doing a film about my family and the church … and need some shots here. This building—it was ten years ago my brother came here to report his abuse. Do you have a problem with me shooting here?”

“Well, sir, it is private property,” says Lennon, who stands a full head taller than the filmmaker. At this point Lennon is not identified.

“I did twelve years of Catholic school,” says Cultrera.

“That does not—”

“My family put so much money into this church.”

“No, no, that has nothing to do with it,” replies Lennon, turning away, waving his hands in a dismissive motion.

Provoked, Cultrera starts mimicking Lennon. “No, that has nothing to do with nothing. It’s always
take, take, take.
”

Lennon turns. “Sir,” he says icily, “if you think you’re going to make me feel bad about this, you’re not.”

“No, I know you guys don’t feel bad. You don’t feel anything.”

“No, that’s not true. You can say whatever you want. The thing is that this man”—the cameraman—“had been asked to leave.”

“Then he asked me, and I said, ‘Don’t worry, go ahead and shoot.’ ”

“As if
you
have authority,” retorts Lennon.

“I do have authority.”

“No, you—”

“Same as
you
do. How much money have you put into the church?”

“That—Sir, that—”

“My family has paid for the church. All you’ve done is taken.”

Again, Lennon turns to leave.

“You’ve got to walk away,” Cultrera calls. “You have no argument!”

Taking the bait, Lennon turns again. “Sir, you have nothing to say. You’ve paid for nothing. Your family paid for nothing.”

“We’ve paid with our souls, paid with our cash!” he cries in a near-operatic retort.

“Nahhh,”
sneers Lennon.

“—paid with our church—”

“Nice try,” replies the bishop dismissively.

“You took our church.”

“Nice try. Nice try. It’s all in your head, sir. You’re just a sad little man. Sad little man.”

Lennon walks toward the office. Cultrera snaps: “You’re a sad big man. You’re a sadder big man.”
⁶

The film excerpt then cuts to the home of Cultrera’s parents in Salem, and the family’s realization that the priest who argued with Joe was Bishop Lennon, the architect of Reconfiguration, the man who shut their own parish.

For the broadcast of the segment in Cleveland, Lennon refused Bill Sheil’s request for an interview. The diocese sent a statement by the bishop:

I went outside to ask the people to leave this property. The parties involved were never identified and the sole issue in our exchange involved their presence on private property. I was taunted and treated in an extremely unprofessional manner, resulting in the exchange as portrayed in the documentary.

The camera can be cruel to one caught off guard. Perhaps Lennon had no idea why the cameraman was there. Cultrera, quickening to the chance for spontaneous drama, says, “It was ten years ago my brother came here to report his abuse. Do you have a problem with me shooting here?” Lennon at that point in time had met with some of Boston’s abuse survivors, but as the archdiocesan building looms behind him, the bishop offers not a word of sympathy for Cultrera’s brother. Nor does he try to finesse a new start for the hungry camera. Why
not
let some guy in a baseball cap film exteriors of a building that TV news has shot countless times? Instead, making it a turf war, Lennon projects his response to protesters bunkered down in Boston churches he wants to sell—
it’s private property!
—and comes off an insulting bully.

Several days after that embarrassing clip on Fox 8, it could not have been easy on Lennon as he entered the City Club of Cleveland for a scheduled talk. Eleven years had passed since Pilla condemned regional sprawl, promoting Church in the City. Could Lennon charm Cleveland’s civic elite? “There are many things that a bishop is engaged in internally,” he began. “Preaching and teaching, celebrating the sacraments and pastoral care … I entitled our little talk today, ‘The Church Going Forward.’ ” The transcript suggests Lennon spoke extemporaneously or possibly from notes. The syntax is excruciating:

Certainly, one of the things that strikes me but also strikes many people as looking for the church’s attention at the present moment is the need for education and formation within the Catholic community …

We are in need of solid religious education in the parish programs for youth in our Catholic schools and, in particular, as the Catholic bishops in the United States increasingly have focused on is adult education and formation. There’s a crying need for all of us within the Catholic community to know our faith so that we in turn may live it as fully as possible.
⁷

Declaring “no shortcuts” for adult religious education, Lennon mentions his work for vocations. Then he cites two phases in Vibrant Parish Life.

The first one was to invite parishioners of their diocese as parishioners of parishes to reflect on the vibrancy, the vitality, the energy of their particular parish to really come to understand who they were and what they were doing with the idea that the second phase would be when parishes would then begin to work together to enhance and to better what their internal life had been.

There are all kinds of concern about what may happen with the clustering. I must say in the past week and a half since the letters went out, we have received only four replies, two of which was congratulatory, one was questioning and one asked for reconsideration.

I think the low response is reflective of how the process was done and the respect with which the various parish requests as to who they would be clustered with were respected.

To a very large percent, the parishes were clustered with those who they had mentioned in their own report. My hope is that this will be an opportunity for all of our parishes and all the people in the parishes to enhance their own Catholic life … The clustering process with the good will of the people and their energy will in fact do what Bishop Pilla had envisioned to be an opportunity for the church to revigorize itself going forward.

Returning to “the church’s interaction in the larger community,” Lennon assessed Catholic education:

The schools, especially as we see them, but not exclusively in the inner cities, the church is committed to not only educating, but helping people to give them an opportunity … I have visited now twelve of our Catholic high schools, many of which have large numbers of nonCatholic students, and I feel confident that the contribution we’re making is indeed a helpful contribution and a significant one. It does challenge us, however, as a church to be able to continue to offer this because of resources and personnel, and yet I personally would want us to be able to always offer what we’re offering today.

Turning to Catholic Charities, with its large budget, he was on surer footing, reviewing various programs, and thanking members of the development office in the audience “for all that they have done … so that we, as a diocese, can make a contribution to the larger community.”

Bishop Lennon cited scripture to convey his idea of faith.

As we go forward as a diocese, we do so in a dual relationship, as I see it. One relationship as a bishop, I call the Catholic community to a deeper relationship with God. First and foremost, we are a religion. We are a faith community. So, as a bishop, my concern is a relationship with God that, in turn, enlivens the lives of individuals so that they in turn may have a committed relationship with all of their brothers and sisters in these eight counties. When Our Lord was asked what is the greatest commandment, he answers very succinctly, to love God and love your neighbor. And that is still our charge today. That is my charge as a leader of the Catholic community—to work with those in the church to deepen those relationships so that we’re ever more faithful with the mission that the church has been given, that God’s kingdom will be on earth as it is in heaven.

In the question period, someone asked if the clustering would see a shift from the city “out in the suburbs and rural parishes.” He said, “I don’t see where that needs at all to be, you know, exclusionary of the—you know, the Church and the City. One of the first things I did when I came here, I read all those documents … I did not see where clustering a group of parishes in a section of the city precludes relationships with the parishes in the suburbs … I think the two can go along, you know, side by side.” To a similar question, he responded, “In this year’s financial statements to the diocese, again sent to everyone, shows that forty-two percent [of parishes] are operating in the red. So I think that clustering at least since mid-summer if not before, I have consistently spoken that the main reasons are threefold. Demographic shift, number one. Number two, is the whole question of financial viability, and number three is the decreasing number of priests.”

Out of the mangled sentence structure, Lennon at least acknowledged what he did not say to FutureChurch leaders: the priest shortage
was
a factor.

VICTIMS FOR THE PROSECUTION

Judge Ann Aldrich, who would preside over the Smith-Zgoznik trial, had been appointed to the federal bench in 1980 by President Carter. With a law degree from New York University, staff experience at the Federal Communications Commission, and twenty-seven years on the federal bench, Judge Aldrich was nearly eighty. Despite her reputation as a liberal with a sympathy for civil liberties, she denied the request by Zgoznik’s counsel to learn whether the prosecution had given immunity to any witnesses.

In another motion seeking evidence, Smith’s attorney, Philip Kushner, took a knife to the diocese’s Achilles’ heel: “The indictment takes no position regarding whether Father Wright was authorized to pay Mr. Smith additional compensation, or to not disclose it on the [diocese’s] financial records, or to conceal it from others within the Diocese.” Kushner made no issue of Smith’s $270,000 off-the-books compensation. Smith, however, was accused of taking $784,624 in other fees. “Father Wright was not duped,” declaimed Kushner.

[Wright] is a financially sophisticated attorney. He arranged for other Diocesan employees to receive compensation through the Zgoznik Entities, so that it would not be disclosed on the [diocese’s] books and records.
⁸

In 1996, while financial and legal secretary, Wright also became CEO of the Catholic Cemeteries Association, which had 170 employees and seventeen sites. Wright left the chancery in 2000 to handle Cemeteries full-time. “Cemeteries was a cash cow,” Charlie Feliciano told me with a shrug. People buy in, die, loved ones follow. Kushner’s motions suggested he owned a map of where evidentiary bodies lay buried. Moreover, the digest of an FBI interview with Zrino Jukic stated that

the reason this money was given to Smith was because he was invited to be on the Board of Directors for Blue Cross Blue Shield and other companies; however, Bishop Pilla would not permit him to sit on these boards. Because of this, Smith was going to leave the Diocese while he still had the opportunity to pursue other more lucrative business ventures. Jukic went on to say that
Marilyn Ruane, secretary of the Diocese Cemeteries Association, was on the payroll of Resultant Corporation but didn’t work there. Ruane was Father Wright’s girlfriend.
⁹

“John was in love with Marilyn,” says Smith matter-of-factly. “I did Marilyn’s tax returns. John met Marilyn at St. Bernadette’s. I always thought he’d leave the priesthood and marry after his dad died, but he stayed a priest.”

“The defense of this case centers on whether Mr. Zgoznik believed he was authorized to make the payments to Mr. Smith and what the Diocese knew about those payments,” asserted Zgoznik’s attorney, Robert Rotatori, in another evidentiary request. Certain payments “were, in large part, for Father Wright” because Wright’s “friend … needed work.”
¹⁰
Marilyn Ruane began work at Cemeteries in 1997 on a salary of $31,500, which ramped up to $81,000 by 2004, prompting the scornful tone of the journalist Bill Frogameni, writing for the
Cleveland Scene:
“If the raises seem a bit outsized for a religious entity funded by the dollar donations of little old ladies, Ruane isn’t talking. ‘I really don’t want to comment about that,’ she said sweetly when contacted by
Scene
, ‘but thanks so much for calling.’ ”
¹¹