Render Unto Rome (68 page)

75.
Complaint, Court of Common Pleas, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, case no. 05 565095,
Rosie Andujar, et al. Plaintiffs v. Anthony M. Pilla, et al. Defendants
,
June 13, 2005. The lawsuit also names Thomas Kelly, who was an official of the diocesan Cemeteries office; Kelly was not indicted.

76.
Memorandum of Opinion and Order, Judge Stuart A. Friedman,
Rosie Andujar, et al. v. Anthony M. Pilla, et al.
, September 12, 2005.

77.
“Cleveland Bishop Asks Permission of Pope to Retire,” Catholic News Agency, January 6, 2006.

78.
I would not have thought to ask Sister Schenk about the catacomb of Saint Priscilla were it not for a reference to the site in Garry Wills,
What Jesus Meant
(New York, 2006), p. 51. On the group’s visit, see Sylvia Poggioli, “Pilgrims Trace Women’s Role in Early Church,”
NPR
, transcript, April 16, 2006.

CHAPTER 10
:
PROSECUTION AND SUPPRESSION

  1.
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA,
U.S. v. Joseph H. Smith and Anton Zgoznik
, August 16, 2006.

  2.
Mike Tobin, “Lawyer Says Priest Duped by Associates,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, August 24, 2006.

  3.
Ibid.

  4.
Conference for Pastoral Planning and Council Development,
2003 National Study of Parish Reorganization
,
www.cppcd.org
.

  5.
David Briggs, “Local Catholic Finances ‘Stretched,’ ”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, February 6, 2007.

  6.
The dialogue is from the transcript. Courtesy Zingerplatz Pictures Inc., Joe Cultrera, producer,
Hand of God
, 2007.

  7.
Bishop Richard Lennon, “The Church Going Forward,” City Club of Cleveland, February 16, 2007. Transcript courtesy City Club of Cleveland.

  8.
Defendant Joseph H. Smith’s Motion to Order Production of Documents, case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA,
U.S. v. Joseph H. Smith and Anton Zgoznik
, February 16, 2007. The motion and other documents from the case can be accessed on
www.bishopaccountability.org
. Hereafter referred to as case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA.

  9.
Redacted FBI interview with Zrino E. Jukic, November 17, 2005, case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA, document 51-6, exhibit E, filed March 15, 2007.

10.
Defendant Anton Zgoznik’s Response to Motion of United States to Quash Subpoena to Huntington Bank, case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA, November 15, 2006.

11.
Bill Frogameni, “The Scum Always Rises: An Embezzlement Scandal Closes In on Top Diocesan Officials,”
Cleveland Scene
, April 4, 2007.

12.
Defendant Smith’s Motion Regarding Destruction of Evidence by the Diocese and Request for the Evidentiary Hearing, case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA, August 1, 2007.

13.
Smith’s Motion to Order, case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA, February 16, 2007.

14.
Mike Tobin, “Fund Furnished Diocesan Home, Ex-Workers Say,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, February 25, 2007.

15.
James F. McCarty, “Catholic Diocese’s Income Declines, Pilla Cutting Costs, but Church Says It Is Not in Fiscal Crisis,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, April 5, 2004.

16.
Judge Ann Aldrich, Memorandum and Order, case no. 1:06-CR-00394-AA, June 14, 2007. See also Mike Tobin, “Judge Orders Catholic Diocese to Turn Over Financial Records,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, June 15, 2007.

17.
Christopher Maag, “Cleveland Diocese Accused of Impropriety as Embezzlement Trial Nears,”
New York Times
, August 20, 2007.

18.
Trial transcript, testimony of Anton Zgoznik, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, case no. 1:06CR394-02,
U.S. v. Anton Zgoznik
, September 24, 2007.

19.
Trial transcript, testimony of Zrino Jukic,
U.S. v. Anton Zgoznik
, case no. 1:06CR394-02, August 23, 2007.

20.
U.S. v. Anton Zgoznik
, case no. 1:06CR394-02, government exhibit 72-1. The U.S. Attorney’s office made available to me the CD-R of the taped conversation, and the transcript that was scrolled for jurors as the tape played during the trial. The transcript per se was admitted only as an aid for the jury. See also James F. McCarty, “Tape Evidence Splits Trials of 2 Charged with Catholic Diocese Kickbacks,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, August 9, 2007.

21.
Trial transcript, John Wright testimony,
U.S. v. Anton Zgoznik
, case no. 1:06CR394-02, August 27, 2007. All quotations from the proceedings that follow are taken from the transcript, unless otherwise indicated.

22.
James F. McCarty, “Juror in Diocesan Kickback Trial Wanted to Hear More from Pilla,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, October 5, 2007.

23.
James F. McCarty, “At Church Kickback Trial, ‘Roman Collar Amnesia,’ ”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, September 4, 2007.

24.
James F. McCarty, “Jury Now Has Diocese Kickback Case,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, September 28, 2007.

25.
Michael O’Malley, “A Fight for Churches,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, March 2, 2009.

26.
Diocesan Finances, 2008–2009,
Key Diocesan Realities—a Context for Parish Consolidation
,
www.dioceseofcleveland.org
.

27.
Ibid.

28.
Ibid.

29.
Michael O’Malley and Robert L. Smith, “Parishes Get Bishop’s Decision: 29 Will Close and 41 Will Merge,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, March 15, 2009.

30.
Ibid.

31.
Diocesan Finances, 2008–2009,
Key Diocesan Realities
,
www.dioceseofcleveland.org
.

32.
O’Malley, “A Fight for Churches.”

33.
Michael Polensek, telephone interview with the author, October 22, 2010.

34.
Reverend Robert Begin, letter to Archbishop Pietro Sambi, April 6, 2009.

35.
Michael O’Malley, “St. Colman to Stay Open After Bishop Reconsiders,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, May 2, 2009. See also Michael O’Malley, “The Rev. Bob Begin, Known as the Rebel Priest, Wins His Latest Battle—to Keep St. Colman Church Open,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, June 15, 2009.

36.
Tom Roberts, “Cleveland Diocese Shaken by Seismic Shifts,”
National Catholic Reporter
, May 9, 2009.

37.
Tom Roberts, “Scranton’s Bishop Martino Stepping Down,”
National Catholic Reporter
, August 28, 2009.

38.
Tim Townsend, “The St. Stanislaus Saga: Is Resolution Imminent?”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, May 1, 2010; Tim Townsend, “After Years of Discord, Status of St. Stanislaus’s Is Coming to an End,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, July 31, 2010.

39.
Malcolm Gay, “Renegade Priest Leads a Split St. Louis Parish,”
New York Times
, August 13, 2010; Joseph Kenny, “St. Louis Parish Rejects Archdiocese’s Proposal,” Catholic News Service, August 24, 2010, in
National Catholic Reporter
.

40.
Joan M. Nuth, Ph. D., “The Story of a Church,” unpublished. Nuth, a systematic theologian at John Carroll University in Cleveland, sent the essay to Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the papal nuncio in Washington, D.C., on April 18, 2009. The essay appeared in the parish’s online newsletter, which has ceased circulation on the Internet since the parish was suppressed.

41.
Court of Appeals, Third District, Seneca County,
Kansas St. James Parish of Ohio, et al. Plaintiffs-Appellants v. The Catholic Diocese of Toledo in America, et al., Defendants-Appellees
, case no. 13-08-19.

42.
Rachel Dissell, “Final Mass at Downtown St. Peter Catholic Church Leaves ‘An Empty Tomb,’ ”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, April 4, 2010.

CHAPTER 11
:
THE DEBTS OF APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION

  1.
“The Plot Thickens: Two Normas, Maciel, Consecrated and Quirece and des Andres,” March 25, 2010,
www.exlcblog.com
; Carmen H. Moreno, “Las familias de Maciel,”
Quien
, March 19, 2010.

  2.
George Weigel, author of a 1998 biography of John Paul, was among the pope’s advisers at the Vatican during the 2002 abuse crisis. Weigel portrays the pope as a victim of Maciel’s deception in
The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy
(New York, 2010). Weigel argues that John Paul was poorly informed by Vatican officials in 2002. In response to the pounding international media coverage at the time, John Paul issued a statement that condemned clergy predators yet left room for redemption of those priests (see chapter 3). The inconclusive nature of that document mirrored his ambivalence on the issue. John Paul was one of the great popes and a towering figure of the twentieth century, but his failures of church governance were substantial. By
bending over backward to absolve John Paul of responsibility in the abuse crisis, Weigel avoids—indeed, distorts—the historical record. In 1984 Father Tom Doyle wrote a forty-two-page summary of the abuse crisis, as it unfolded, for his boss, Archbishop Pio Laghi, the papal nuncio, who sent the information to Rome. In
Vows of Silence
(New York, 2004), Gerald Renner and I tracked the escalation of scandals in the 1990s, particularly the case of Cardinal Groër of Austria, whose 1995 retirement amid a flood of allegations we now know caused great tension between Ratzinger and Sodano over the Vatican’s tight-lipped response to Groër’s history of sexual abuses. Weigel (unlike Jonathan Kwitny in his biography
Man of the Century
) ignores the well-documented record of John Paul’s passivity and inaction for years before he was weakened by Parkinson’s disease. By failing to cite the interviews Maciel’s victims gave to us and other journalists, Weigel approaches Maciel as if the public accusations had no merit until they became testimony with the CDF investigator, Monsignor Scicluna, whose sessions began the day John Paul died. By avoiding the public record on Maciel during John Paul’s lifetime, Weigel silences himself on Cardinal Sodano’s machinations and why Ratzinger waited eight years before ordering an investigation. Ignoring the evidence, Weigel places John Paul above fault, citing only the “incapacity and weakness on the part of the Pope’s subordinates, who ought to have had, when circumstances demanded it, the courage to lead according to the pattern he had set” (p. 514). Regarding the abuse crisis, that “pattern” is the issue. Weigel does not identify those subordinates, which is not surprising. Hagiography is no handmaiden of history; however, a valid case for sainthood cannot be made without confronting the factual reality, and human failings, in the life of a given candidate for sainthood.

Weigel treats Maciel as a master of deception, the pope as his victim. On page 552 of
The End and the Beginning
, Weigel in footnote 139 says that he interviewed Maciel on February 19, 1998. This is remarkable. Maciel avoided journalists for most of his life; after the 1997
Hartford Courant
report he gave an orchestrated statement to Jésus Colina, the Regnum Christi editor of Zenit, the Legion news service, for the book
Christ Is My Life
(2003), which constituted his self-defense. Weigel actually got Maciel to talk a year after the
Hartford Courant
report of February 23, 1997, that put his victims on record. What did Weigel ask him? What did Maciel say? For years thereafter, Weigel’s endorsement of the Legion was prominent on the website
LegionaryFacts.org
, which defended Maciel against his putative enemies, the victims. In 2009, when the news broke on Maciel’s daughter, Weigel used the
First Things
website to call for a Vatican investigation of the Legion. Better late than never, Weigel was also engaging in a personal form of spin control, positioning himself against his previous support of the order and his own record of whitewashing history.

  3.
A June 2010 editorial in
New Oxford Review
, “The Double Life of Marcial
Maciel,” quoted Podles as saying that Groër “had molested almost every student he had come into contact with for decades.” In response to my e-mail about his source, Podles wrote on November 20, 2010: “A German homosexual web site claimed that Groer had molested almost every student (1,000+) that he had come into contact with. I asked Cardinal [Christoph] Schönborn about this claim, and he said that Groer had made strong homoerotic gestures to most of his students, but that the gestures did not extend as far as penetration.”

  4.
John Paul II,
Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
, Apostolic Letter, to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone, May 22, 1994,
www.vatican.va
.