Render Unto Rome (57 page)

But by Holy Week of 2010, Benedict XVI had suffered a spectacular loss of respect in public opinion as the abuse crisis came home to Europe, “with scandals convulsing Ireland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and Austria,” writes Andrew Walsh, a scholar and former journalist, in a detailed account of the media coverage.
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The media was relentless on Benedict, particularly the
New York Times
, which quoted the Vatican correspondence provided by Jeff Anderson on Ratzinger’s soft-glove treatment of the Wisconsin priest who had abused dozens of deaf students. The credit Ratzinger had gained as a cardinal for taking responsibility of the abuse cases in the CDF teetered against the weight of past decisions, marked by inertia. The pontiff who as cardinal had stood in judgment over theological adversaries, forcing them to answer questions, had no answers to give, and so fell silent.

The Curia took the foredoomed stance of attacking the messenger.
L’Osservatore Romano
scored the media for “an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost.” But the Vatican had no youth protection charter, as the American bishops had adopted in 2002, nor did the Holy See have procedures that might penalize the world’s bishops. Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany bravely distanced himself from the Curia in telling
La Repubblica
, “We have to seriously clean up the church.” But for Benedict to “clean up,” he had to change the assumptions of apostolic succession; and if he opened the bishops to a judicial overview on their tolerance of predatory clerics, what would happen to bishops accused of misusing money?
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If a single episode framed the moral relativism of Benedict’s papacy it came at Easter Mass, on April 4, 2010, in St. Peter’s Square when Angelo Sodano, now dean of the College of Cardinals, preached a defense of the pope. The faithful would “rally close around you, successor to Peter, bishop of Rome, the unfailing rock of the holy church,” he declared. The cardinal who had pressured Ratzinger not to prosecute Maciel in John Paul’s time now said soothingly, “We are deeply grateful to you for the strength of spirit and apostolic courage with which you announce the Gospel.” With a backhanded barb at the press, Sodano continued, “Holy Father, on your side are the people of God, who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials which sometimes buffet the community of believers.”
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Sodano on Easter executed a 180-degree shift from being a paid champion of Maciel to a shield of the beleaguered pope. “What we are dealing with now is a cultural battle: the pope embodies moral truths which people don’t accept and for that reason the shortcomings and errors of priests are used as arms against the church,” Sodano told
L’Osservatore Romano
. “It was not the fault of Jesus if he was betrayed by Judas. Nor is it the fault of a bishop if one of his priests sullies himself with grave crimes. And certainly, it is not the responsibility of the pontiff.”
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Here was the logic of apostolic succession draped in pearls of self-righteousness: Maciel as Judas to the Christ-like Sodano!

“There is absolutely no strategy, and I say that as a friend of the pope’s,” an American bishop, unnamed, told the author and PoliticsDaily correspondent David Gibson.
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But there was a strategy, of some inchoate sort, for handling the Legion
of Christ. On May 1, 2010, the Vatican issued a statement that excoriated Maciel for a double life “devoid of any scruples and authentic sense of religion.” Thus had he managed to sexually assault young boys for so many years. “By pushing away and casting doubt upon all those who questioned his behavior, and the false belief that he wasn’t doing harm to the good of the Legion, he created around him a defense mechanism that made him unassailable for a long period, making it difficult to know his true life.”
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Not a word on John Paul’s blind praises of Maciel after the accusations.

The Vatican would be naming a special envoy to help the Legionaries “purify” the good that remained in the order, for a “profound revision” necessary to carry on.

The language denouncing Maciel was strong, but how would the Vatican exert the high moral purpose that Benedict called the church to follow on a cultlike operation such as the Legionaries?

Eleven days after the announcement Father Álvaro Corcuera, the superior general, traveled from Rome to New York City for a four-hour meeting with Juan Vaca. Vaca was the first to denounce Maciel, naming victims’ names, in correspondence to the Vatican in 1976, 1978, and 1989. He had settled in Long Island. The twelve-year psychosexual entanglement with Maciel, which began when he was twelve, had caused him to study psychology after leaving the priesthood, trying to determine “where sickness ends and evil starts.” Trim and hale, with thinning hair and a resonant voice, Juan Vaca had a gentlemanly Latin demeanor. He had made a career as a college teacher and guidance counselor, married late, and had a teenage daughter he adored.

Corcuera denied my interview request. A Legion spokesman, Jim Fair, said, “He did meet with Vaca, and others in Mexico, as part of his outreach.”
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That outreach was another twist in Pope Benedict’s lurching road toward justice, now that the Vatican had taken control of the strange organization. Corcuera, age fifty-three, came from an upper-middle-class Mexico City family; he had been a frequent guest at the Apostolic Palace when the Legion was sending money to the papal secretary Stanislaw Dziwisz.

The meeting with Vaca took place at Mercy College in midtown Manhattan, where Vaca was an adjunct professor. The two men sat in a conference room. “He embraced me in a manly, Mexican way and was about to
kneel down in asking my forgiveness,” Vaca recounted. “I said no, and had him sit at the head of the table, and I to his immediate right.”

Corcuera struck him as relaxed, seemingly kind. Vaca called him “Álvarito,” a Latin term of endearment. He assumed an avuncular role, asking the younger priest about his background. Corcuera recalled his youth in a Legion school, inspired by Maciel to join the order. He had gone to seminary in Orange, Connecticut, when Vaca was a superior. (The campus was recently on the real estate market, as the Legion began downsizing.) Vaca did not remember Corcuera from those years; he had worked with many seminarians before leaving in 1976 to join the Rockville Centre diocese. “You were nice to me,” said Corcuera. He explained that when he became superior general to succeed Maciel, in 2004, the election came as a surprise for him.

“Well, Maciel trained you for the job,” Vaca clarified.

Corcuera insisted he was elected at an open chapter, not handpicked by Maciel. “I asked point-blank if Corcuera knew about Maciel’s abuses,” Vaca told me. “He said no. I said, ‘You knew he sent money to the ladies,’ meaning the mother in Madrid, Norma and her daughter. He said, ‘I learned after 2004.’ He didn’t give a specific date on when he learned it, and I didn’t press him.”

After letting Corcuera talk for an hour or so, Vaca recounted how Maciel had abused him and other seminarians decades ago; how he had pulled Maciel, passed out on morphine, from drowning in a hotel bathtub in Tetuán, Morocco, in 1957, the year Corcuera was born. “He felt ashamed. He hung his head, whispering,
I do believe you
. He put his face in his hands,” said Vaca.

Corcuera told Vaca that Legionaries were circulating his 1976 letter denouncing Maciel, naming the twenty other seminary victims. If that was true, it marked a striking shift from the summer of 2009, when two Legion priests in Rome told me that the seminarians were still being taught about Maciel’s heroic life.

Vaca accepted his apologies, adding, “But this is not a solution.” He insisted that the Legion provide fair compensation for the harm and damages to him and other victims. Corcuera replied that the Legion in Rome had formed a committee to explore the issue. He asked Vaca what he thought would be fair compensation. Refusing to name a figure, Vaca told him to
look at what American dioceses had paid in victim settlements. Vaca had a deeper issue: how the order had engaged in “slandering me” while defending Maciel. “Think about that. Come up with an amount. I’m not going to tell you how much.”

The website
LegionaryFacts.org
began posting defenses of Maciel—and criticism of the accusers—after the 1997
Hartford Courant
report exposing Maciel’s abuse of Legion youths. Father Owen Kearns, publisher of the Legion-owned
National Catholic Register
, derided the victims for “a coordinated conspiracy to smear Father Maciel.” Kearns on
LegionaryFacts.org
had called Vaca “a proud, status-conscious man angered and disappointed at his professional failures,” who had wanted “greater power in the Legion.” But Vaca had resigned in his 1976 letter to Maciel.

Vaca had been a counselor for disabled students at York College in the City University of New York, on the fourth year of a five-year tenure track position, when he was terminated in 1999. He believed the Legion’s “attack on my credibility and character” caused the college not to renew the contract.

LegionaryFacts.org
came down from the Internet in 2006 after the Vatican punished Maciel. Four years later, Kearns issued a general apology to Gerald Renner and me for criticizing our
Hartford Courant
report, but he did not name any victims.

Corcuera and Vaca said cordial good-byes. The Legion superior promised to work on the compensation issue. At his request, Vaca provided names and contact information for Maciel’s victims in Mexico.

Corcuera’s very presence signaled the influence of Benedict and Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the canon lawyer at the CDF who had worked for two years taking the testimony of the aging men Maciel had coerced as boys, hearing their accounts of oral sex, sodomy, and masturbation rituals. As part of its “takeover,” the Vatican was prodding the Legion into a position similar to that of many bishops who clenched their teeth and wrote large checks to lawyers representing abuse survivors. As the Vatican, in its soft-glove way, pushed the Legion toward financial reparations, in Rome, Jeff Anderson filed suit against the order on June 16, 2010, in Connecticut, on behalf of Raúl González Lara, Maciel’s older natural son from Mexico, who alleged a long history of incest and emotional distress by his father, with certain episodes taking place in America.
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SUING THE HOLY SEE

Ironically, as the Vatican was prodding the Legion on the issue of compensation to Maciel’s older victims, the Holy See was arguing that it deserved immunity from a case Jeff Anderson had filed in Oregon. He had named the Holy See as one of the defendants.
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The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act set limits on whether a foreign government can be sued in U.S. courts; it restricts intervention by the White House and State Department. The priest in question had a record of abusing youths in his native Ireland before his transfer to America. Anderson and his Oregon cocounsel William Barton argued that civil responsibility extended beyond the religious order leader and local bishop to the Vatican. The Holy See hired a California attorney, Jeffrey Lena, to defend the case. Lena’s motion to dismiss failed; the Oregon court ordered discovery. Lena appealed to the federal court, which sided with the state court. Lena petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a hearing.

The lawsuit asserted that the Holy See—the government of the sovereign monarchy, as opposed to the Vatican as administrator of the city-state—engaged in widespread commercial activity and control over its religious servants. The discovery request drew upon the research of the departed priests Patrick Wall, Tom Doyle, and Richard Sipe.

Each Bishop keeps track of how much money it obtains for the Holy See through the Peter’s Pence solicitation … Plaintiff made requests of information about Quinquennial Reports. These reports are required by the Holy See to be sent every five years from each Bishop and each religious order superior. The Holy See requires that the document list the financial well-being of the diocese … [Religious orders] must detail for the Holy See the financial condition of the Order, including all property acquired, whether any gains or losses have been sustained, whether there is debt, and whether all temporal goods of the Order and each of its provinces is administered according to the Canons.

In 1947 the Vatican updated the requirements for the Religious Orders’ Quinquennial Reports. In addition to the financial disclosures, it also required the Religious Orders to answer whether any of the religious members had sexually abused any of the younger students in their care. It also required the Religious
Orders to answer if they had taken precautions against the dangers of priests sexually abusing children.
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Marci Hamilton handled Jeff Anderson’s appellate briefs on constitutional issues. Hamilton holds an endowed chair at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. An author and a prolific writer on legal issues, she specializes in religious issues that bear upon the First Amendment. Her husband is Catholic; several years after their son’s baptism, she learned that the priest who performed the ritual had been removed for child abuse. When Hamilton read the petition to the Supreme Court in the Oregon case, she told Anderson, “The arguments are weak, I wouldn’t dignify it with a response. Jeff Lena’s trying to buy time.”

Briefs to the Supreme Court can take a year or longer before a decision is issued on whether the court will hear the case. “Then we get a letter from the court, which they rarely write, requesting our response,” Hamilton told me. “It was one of the easiest I’ve written. There is no need for the Supreme Court to hear this; the issue is state law, not a federal issue. The Court normally would have denied the request for review at that point, but the justices wanted more. After they got our response, they asked for the Solicitor General’s views. Then I got a call from the Solicitor General’s civil division: they want to meet face-to-face. Now it’s political.”