Render Unto Rome (45 page)

In the end, Judge Aldrich saw Zgoznik as a fall guy for church officials’ dishonesty. The winner was the Jones Day law firm. All those billable hours! Steve Sozio did what high-dollar defense attorneys do for dirty clients: he turned them into witnesses against smaller fish. The U.S. Attorney did what prosecutors do: move the case with the strongest evidence. The big piece was Zrino Jukic’s secret tape recording; the weak link, Wright and Pilla as victims. Had Rotatori done a better job cross-examining Jukic and Wright, and had Zgoznik never testified, his trial may well have ended differently. The Smith jury rejected the charge that his nearly $785,000 off-the-books were kickbacks. Smith told me his attorney’s fees exceeded $1 million. The Cleveland diocese surely spent several times that to protect Pilla, Wright, and what credibility they had.

ASSETS TO THE SUBURBS

As the financial scandal receded, Bishop Lennon got down to business. In March 2009 the diocese announced it would close twenty-nine Cleveland parishes outright and an additional forty-one would merge with others. Across the eight counties, fifty-two churches in all would close. The inner-city and inner-ring suburbs accounted for thirty-eight closures, the poorest neighborhoods bearing the brunt. Akron, Elyria, and Lorain—which was poorer than Cleveland, since a Ford plant downsizing—lost twelve parishes among them.

“Some were big surprises—St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. James in Lakewood and St. Colman in Cleveland,” wrote Michael O’Malley in the
Plain Dealer:

Shutting down Colman and Ignatius means the darkening of two brilliantly lighted West Side steeples, both of which are prominent landmarks reaching into the city’s skyline …

“The suburbs are isolated from the poor,” said Colman parishioner Carol Romansky of Berea, noting how inner-city neighborhoods took the biggest hits in the downsizing. “Would Jesus have stayed in the suburbs?”
²⁵

“We’re just too big for the number of people that we have,” Lennon told Mike O’Malley, as emotions roiled in many of the targeted parishes.

Cleveland did not have the black hole of deficit financing Law had left Boston. Indeed, for all of his petty greed and secrecy, Tony Pilla, like a wily ward boss, had paid attention to the real estate; he kept old churches open, even as maintenance costs and unpaid assessments rose. Catholic Charities would counter the worst ravages of urban decay. Although his diocese did face tough realities that a prudent plan of limited closures could have mitigated, Lennon’s rationale stemmed from Boston, liquidating assets to cover the operational shortfalls. For Cleveland, Lennon took preventative steps. But Cleveland in 2006—four years after Pilla’s frantic midnight calls to Joe Smith—had
gained
$1 million in parish Offertory donations, taking in $106.1 million, while Boston since 2002 had steadily registered losses and deficits. Cleveland had seen a drop of $2 million from 2002 in reaction to the pedophilia cover-up. But in 2004, the Sunday plates began a steady climb and in 2005 registered $104.5 million. In 2006—the year the secret files on Zgoznik and Smith made headlines—the collections rose again, by $1.6 million.
²⁶
Quite the opposite happened in Boston, which one could take as a popular repudiation of Lennon’s Reconfiguration plan. Cleveland’s numbers track the national data cited in the prologue of Catholics who kept giving
to their parishes
despite the spectacle of their bishops slogging in scandal muck.

Lennon approached Cleveland like a banker redlining loans in poor neighborhoods. As chief executive officer he would follow the trail of prosperity, shift priests to suburban parishes, recapitalize the diocese. Shuttering inner-city churches and historic gems in old enclaves was pragmatism. In Boston he had suppressed wealthy parishes in order to sell churches in plugging a deficit that trailed back to the 1990s, exacerbated by the abuse cases. In Cleveland he would prevent deficits with early, tough chopping-block decisions.

“He was clueless about Cleveland philanthropy,” explains Sister Christine Schenk. “In Los Angeles, the archdiocese does an annual collection for the urban parishes. We mentioned that at our meeting with Lennon. But he came with his own mind-set to do it his way without recognition of the safety net woven by Church in the City. This diocese was used to interactive decision making. Some parishes needed to close, perhaps fifteen rather than fifty-two.”

Lennon sketched his logic in a sequence of short pages resembling a PowerPoint presentation via the diocesan website. The Catholic population
had declined by 19 percent since 1975. Mass attendance was down 56 percent, to 29 percent.
²⁷
Despite the cost of maintaining inner-city churches, Cleveland had a tradition of people from the suburbs driving in for Sunday Mass in the old neighborhoods, which undergirded Pilla’s Church in the City program. Pilla’s plan became Banquo’s ghost for Lennon: he could not escape the urban church in the memory of Catholic Cleveland. Instead of summoning the hope inherent in faith as an appeal for hard-times generosity, Lennon tried to sell people on fear.

A
N
O
VERVIEW OF
K
EY
D
IOCESAN
R
EALITIES
F
INANCIAL
E
ROSION

• Some parishes are using savings to fund deficit spending

• Deferred maintenance of many parish facilities is a big and increasing concern

• Catholic assets are being used in our Diocese just for the purpose of maintaining more buildings than we can realistically support due to the changed demographics

• 60 parishes have negative net savings (liabilities exceed savings)—27 do not involve mortgage debt

• 17 other parishes have positive net savings of less than $60,000 (low reserves for emergencies)

• Parishes own these assets; yet, it is the Diocese that is compelled to respond to the emergencies
²⁸

A parish owned its assets but, like a slave in the antebellum South, it did not own itself. This reality radiated from Boston to New Orleans, from Scranton to New York City, back again to Cleveland and elsewhere as shuttered parishes joined Peter Borré’s Council of Parishes. Canon law calls the parish a “juridic person.” Conflicting opinions of canon law in diocesan bankruptcy cases demonstrate that the bishop has the power to suppress a juridic person, take its assets, and issue a death warrant for sale or demolition of the physical plant.

FutureChurch flew into action with e-mails to area parishes and information kits, matching sympathetic canon lawyers with protesting parishes.

In Cleveland, twenty-eight Catholic churches had already been designated as historical landmarks. Under Lennon’s order, eight would be
closed. “St. Casimir, one of the biggest and most beautiful churches in the diocese, also learned its Polish Masses will be coming to an end,” reported the
Plain Dealer
.

“St. Ignatius is everything a Cleveland diocese should be,” said Cleveland City councilman Jay Westbrook. “It’s like the United Nations here. They have an integrated school and church. This is where the diocese should be taking its stand.”

“Understandably, there will be sadness and upset,” Lennon said in a statement posted on the diocese’s Web site. “There may well be questioning why us and not them. And even for some there will be anger.”
²⁹

The “upset” extended to Father Joseph Mecir, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus in Slavic Village, who said in a sermon, “This is a real blow to us. We were not expecting this at all. We are the only parish in Slavic Village whose bills are paid. We are not in the red at all. We have no idea why this came about.”
³⁰

Lennon’s plan, for all of its foreboding tone, had no data from urban planners, public officials, priests, or nuns. It was Lennon all the way.

A
N
O
VERVIEW OF
K
EY
D
IOCESAN
R
EALITIES
S
ENSE OF
U
RGENCY
N
EEDED

• In total, the finances of the Diocese and most parishes are not in a crisis state … 
today

• However, there are indicators of immediate or pending crisis for many of our entities

• All parishes must proceed with a sense of urgency before there are more crises than we can handle

• Often the process of closing parishes appears to be about finances

• Granted, finances often create the final sense of urgency

• However, finances are a trailing indicator of stress in a parish

• The leading indicators and real causes are the demographic shifts that began long ago in our area, continued for many years, are still occurring at present
³¹

Removing icons, statues, and paintings was like “ripping out copper plumbing in foreclosed houses,” bristled Councilman Westbrook. “If the diocese is going to make closing announcements and just let the community suffer the consequences, it will require us to enact stricter legislation.”
³²

Michael Polensek, a city councilman for more than thirty years, represented Collinwood, a lakefront ward and ethnic quilt that included old Slovenian streets where he had been raised. “I went to see the bishop,” Councilman Polensek told me. “Even though I’m a lifelong Catholic I made it clear this would be a massive fight and it would not be pretty. Lennon said, ‘The numbers aren’t there, the flock has moved.’ Many of the figures I wouldn’t dispute.”

But Polensek knew the four parishes in his ward were in the black. “They were maintaining the racial stability,” he said. “Here’s my Catholic Church telling me we’re going to vamoose from the old, the poor, the indigent, and above all a racially diverse neighborhood. Is that the message you really want to send? Lennon is not very warm. I don’t know if the diocese is better off financially because you’ve got so many angry people. He’s caused so much animosity.”

Lennon was flanked by police officers when he went to officiate at the final Mass of the Hungarian church, St. Emeric. A group called Endangered Catholics protested outside, singing “God Bless America.”

“The St. Emeric community wanted to buy the church for a cultural center,” continued Polensek. “He wouldn’t sell it to them. It’s that kind of in-your-face stuff that’s so insulting and unsettling. These are people who fled from Europe, came here for religious freedom; I heard the stories as a kid of men and women who carried the bricks and raised the money. He comes here without respect to knock down churches. Some of these architectural gems were abandoned. My great-grandmother’s church, St. Andrew’s at Fifty-fifth and Superior, I drove down there when it was demolished. They didn’t even take the bells out of the tower. It was one of only two examples of Spanish Mission architecture in the city. They never took the wrought-iron cross out of the tower. My mother sent me over to get some bricks. I wanted to drive down Superior Avenue with one of those bricks and say, ‘You know what, you SOB? You couldn’t take the bell and cross out of the tower! That’s a sacrilegious act!’ ”

Polensek did not finish the metaphor of brick usage when we spoke in the fall of 2010. “Collinwood used to be a stand-alone village,” he continued. “It’s predominantly African American but we have a lot of Italians, Irish, and Lithuanians. Senator George Voinovich still lives in the neighborhood. We have a high concentration of city employees, working class, a great sense of pride. We presented documentation to the bishop on each parish. We started a campaign—letters, e-mails, elicting support from Baptist and Jewish leaders to say these are not just houses of worship, these are neighborhood institutions. If you close these it has an impact on stability. Because of pressure we were the only neighborhood not to have a closure.”
³³

Father Bob Begin, who had helped Central American refugees in the 1980s, was pastor of St. Colman. Begin had been studying Arabic in his off hours for several years, anticipating work with Iraqi refugees in America. He hoped for a sabbatical to further his study, but when the closure list came out, his parish was on it. Begin went to see the retired bishop Pilla.

Did Pilla have friends in Rome?

Rome will never reverse a bishop, Pilla told him. Solve the problem locally.

Begin asked if Pilla knew Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the papal nuncio in Washington. “I do know Sambi and you should write him.” But, added Pilla, “you need to think of the church as your mother. You may not agree, but she’s your mother—you love her.”

Archbishop Pietro Sambi made a good impression on embassy row in Washington. The nuncio had silver hair and deep forehead creases that lent dignity to his image after four decades as a diplomat. An Italian trained in canon law, he spoke English, French, and Spanish and had previously served as a nuncio in Indonesia, Cyprus, and Israel. He had worked with Cardinal O’Malley in arranging for Benedict to meet several Boston abuse survivors on his 2008 trip to America. Before that, Sambi had negotiated with Palestinian militants to free people in the siege of a Bethlehem basilica. Lennon’s Darwinist plan for Cleveland may have seemed small by comparison, but Sambi took Begin’s letter seriously. A priest who writes the papal delegate about his bishop knows the letter will go right back to the bishop, who can make his life hell.

“I am deeply troubled,” began Begin. After the cluster groups’ many meetings, “the Bishop made decisions that completely disregarded our recommendations,” he wrote.