While digging through the papers that had been released in the settlement covering Rev. Siegfried Widera, Finnegan had begun to wonder if higher-ups could be subject to complaints of fraud, which enjoyed some leeway under the Wisconsin statute of limitation. Finnegan and Anderson represented two men—identified only as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2—who said that as boys they had been sexually violated by Widera after he had been convicted of criminally abusing a child. Widera’s conviction, they would argue, put the Milwaukee hierarchy on notice and their failure to keep the priest out of ministries that brought him into contact with children constituted a fraud against Catholics who relied on them to assure the conduct of clerics. A similar claim of fraud was made by Anderson and Finnegan on behalf of a man named Charles Linneman, who said he was abused by Franklyn Becker.
The fraud argument was a bit of a long shot, but not so improbable that the attorneys were surprised when the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned a lower court that had denied the plaintiffs a trial. The decision wouldn’t allow every person who had been abused by a priest to sue, but it signaled to those who had been harmed by known offenders—like Rev. Murphy—that the courthouse door had been cracked open. The archdiocese responded to the news with restraint, noting that these cases would require much work before any legal resolution might be found. In the meantime the Church would support victims spiritually. “The tragedy of clergy sexual abuse of children and, perhaps even more, the failure in the past of some within the Church to deal decisively with it long ago, will always be an ugly stain on our history. We renew our apology to all victims/survivors and repeat our sincere effort to support their personal recovery.”
24. A ROLLING CATASTROPHE
The new Pope didn’t play hardball. Instead, he abandoned the perspective he held in 2002, when he complained about the “constant presence of these news items” as if the crisis had been a matter of public relations, not crime. In its place he adopted a more open approach to victims and a sterner response to known abusers.
As he traveled to America for the first time, in 2008, Benedict XVI said he was “deeply ashamed” of clerical abuse. In Washington he met privately with a handful of victims chosen by the archdiocese of Boston. The encounter took place at the same apostolic embassy where, decades earlier, Pio Laghi had ordered Tom Doyle to investigate the abuse case that began the crisis. One participant, Bernie McDaid, said he told the Pope, “You have to fix this.” Like the others, McDaid was grateful for the encounter but not overawed. Asked what he thought about the potential effect of the meeting he said things will get better, “If everyone wants change.”
Most things did not change with Benedict’s rise. For example, he continued to focus on homosexuality in the priesthood, and soon the Vatican issued rules banning even chaste men who have “deeply rooted” homosexual identities from the priesthood. However, he did take one notable step to signal toughness on the abuse issue, forcing Legionaries of Christ founder Marcial Maciel into retirement and “a reserved life of prayer and penitence.”
In disciplining Maciel, Benedict XVI affirmed Jason Berry’s reporting on the once-great priest and boosted the reception that awaited a documentary that the writer produced and directed based on the book Vows of Silence, which he wrote with Gerald Renner. In 2008 the film was named best TV documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival of Mexico City. The film’s success contributed to growing concern about clergy abuse across Latin America. Berry would feel gratified, but this satisfaction was soon overwhelmed by the death of his daughter Ariel.
Born with Down’s syndrome and diagnosed early in life with a degenerative heart disorder, Ariel had lived for years on borrowed time. Her father had often visited the St. Jude Shrine at Our Lady of Guadalupe church to pray for her, lighting candles and thanking God for his daughter’s health. Ariel enjoyed going to his neighborhood church, Mater Dolorosa, and when she died at Christmastime the family thought it natural to have her funeral there. Berry was overwhelmed by the number of people who attended, which included many of the people he had come to know in almost twenty-five years of writing about clergy abuse. Researchers and abuse survivors were among the people who traveled to New Orleans for the Mass. More than a few fellow journalists, who had drawn insights from Berry’s work, also paid their respects.
Ariel was seventeen years old when she died. When she was eight, Berry explored his relationship with her in a piece titled, “Why I Am Still a Catholic.” He wrote:
Through my child I sensed a glimmer of light beyond the sky, a force that can blast you to the knees, something I had only vaguely thought about before … a force outside the self that simply comes, a spirit that upsets all one’s reading and embattled purpose with the sudden mystery of sheer love.
Catholicism, as he felt it, would help Berry through the years immediately after Ariel’s death. In this time he contributed many articles on the Church crisis to the National Catholic Reporter but he also allowed himself to explore new territory. He published a play—Earl Long in Purgatory—about Louisiana’s infamous governor, and he wrote extensively about New Orleans’ struggle to recover from Hurricane Katrina. He added 120 new pages to his 1986 book Up from the Cradle of Jazz, which was reissued in 2009. He covered the massive oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico after a drilling rig working for British Petroleum caught fire, exploded, and sank.
As the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Gauthe case arrived in 2009, Berry was drawn back into the big story of his career as he embarked on an investigation of the Church’s finances, which would end with the publication of his third major work on the Church, Render Unto Rome. The book would reveal how secrecy and special status allowed the institution to evade the scrutiny endured by others and, as in the abuse crisis, enabled both criminal and immoral behavior. It also affirmed the role of money in the pursuit of the institution’s goals and the resolution of its problems.
Historically, the Church protected its assets, along with its moral power, by deflecting abuse complaints and conspiring with secular authorities to cover up crimes against children. In May 2009 this pattern was revealed in stark terms by the final report of the Irish commission that had been formed to investigate child abuse at church-run schools and reformatories. Headed by a high court justice named Sean Ryan, the panel reported shocking levels of rape, beatings, physical neglect, and emotional abuse by clergymen, nuns, and lay staff charged with caring for thirty thousand children. Their findings drew on testimony from more than a thousand people. The authors said that at institutions housing boys, which were run mainly by Christian Brothers, molestation and rape were “endemic.” At girls’ schools, run mainly by the Sisters of Mercy, students were more likely to be subjected to humiliation and denigration but “ritualized” physical abuse was also practiced.
The so-called Ryan Report counted eight hundred abusers in two hundred locales. It outraged the Irish press—The Irish Times called it “the map of Irish hell”—and thousands signed a solidarity document dedicated to victims. Money entered the conversation immediately as officials in the Irish government noted that fourteen thousand victims had filed claims and called on the Church to fund an estimated $1.5 billion in settlement costs. The Sisters of Mercy offered about $200 million in cash and property, which could be added to nearly $50 million paid to victims in 2001. Tom Doyle, who had begun to visit Ireland to consult with victims, urged them to use civil institutions to get justice from the orders. “They must be forced by a power greater than themselves,” said Doyle, “and that’s the courts and the Irish government, to make sure the compensation comes, even to the point of forcibly divesting them of properties.”
Months after the Ryan Report, investigators completed a separate probe of the Archdiocese of Dublin. Although focused only on the local diocese, this document counted more than one hundred priest abusers. The commission also found that local authorities, including the police, had aided the cover-up of crimes committed by priests and that abusers who were notor
ious to authorities were permitted to continue in ministry for years. One priest admitted to molesting a different boy every two weeks for about twenty-five years.
Four Irish bishops resigned in the immediate aftermath of the Dublin report and Pope Benedict XVI summoned the remaining bishops to the Vatican, where he described the abuse committed by Irish priests as “heinous crimes” and told the prelates they had damaged the trust of their flocks. The Pope followed this crisis management session with a letter to Irish Catholics that began with the observation that, “I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.” In the four thousand words that followed Benedict did not blame the evils of secular society for the scandal, nor did he mention homosexuality or anti-Catholic bigotry. Instead he pointed to the dangers of excessive regard for priests and “misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church.”
It was an historic turn in the Vatican’s response to clerical sex abuse, consistent with the Pope’s avowed intention to deal with it more directly and decisively. However, anyone who hoped that this turn would end the crisis would be disappointed. Instead of receding, the tide of scandal flooded into Munich, where Church officials admitted that when Benedict was the city’s archbishop a priest suspected of pedophilia was quietly transferred to a parish where he then abused children. Local church officials said that Benedict, then Ratzinger, knew nothing of the case, which was one of two hundred recently revealed in Germany.
While no documents emerged to connect the Pope to mishandled cases in Germany, Jeff Anderson named him as a defendant in a lawsuit filed on behalf of deaf men who claimed they had been victims of Fr. Lawrence Murphy, whom Ratzinger had failed to discipline. Ratzinger’s role was highlighted in Anderson’s filings, which noted that as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the cardinal failed to respond to allegations against Murphy and allowed the priest to retain his status for years, until he died. Correspondence proving this course of events, which had emerged from the legal discovery process, was placed in the public record and widely reported in the media.
The St. John’s plaintiffs eventually came together at meetings where Anderson, speaking through a sign language interpreter, gave them updates and individuals compared their experiences. At one of these sessions, in a hotel outside Milwaukee, more than a hundred victims and their families gathered to listen as men described lifelong struggles with anxiety, fear, failed relationships, and self-blame.
A sixty-year-old man with graying hair and a white moustache, Terrance Kohut stood in the middle of the crowd and used sign language to recall for the group how he and his wife had suffered because he had been abused. “I kept it to myself,” he signed, putting his fist up to his mouth. “I kept it hidden until I couldn’t keep it hidden, and then I told my wife.” Burdened by panic attacks and anxiety, Kohut saw psychologists who helped him explore what had happened. “I finally blew and wrote a seven-page letter. I poured it out. I let Fr. Murphy have it. I said, ‘You destroyed my life.’ I got no answer.”
Following Church procedure, Kohut had gone to then Archbishop Weakland with his complaints and he submitted to questioning by canon lawyers. He also wrote to Cardinal Angelo Sodano in Rome, asking him to bring his complaints about Murphy to the attention of the Pope. As Kohut recalled, Father Murphy also wrote to the Vatican “and they were so soft about it with him.” To illustrate the point, Kohut used one of his hands to pet the other, as if he was petting a small animal. “They didn’t treat me soft about it.”
Murphy would die before Kohut got satisfaction. Then his wife saw an article about Anderson in People magazine. The piece, titled “Serving Rome,” described Anderson’s first filing against the Pope and was accompanied by photos of him and his family. As Pamela Kohut would recall it, “I saw. I said, ‘Yes! ‘Yes! That’s it. I want Jeff to sue the Vatican for me.’”
Revealed in March 2010 on the front page of The New York Times, the case of the deaf victims and Fr. Murphy presented an unusually manipulative abuser who got away with his crimes. The Times report was written by Laurie Goodstein, who had covered the abuse crisis since 1994. It was accompanied by documents, published online, detailing Murphy’s history as an abuser, his confession, and a long and ultimately ineffective effort to discipline him. Days after the report, SNAP leaders Barbara Blaine, Peter Isley, Barbara Dorris, and John Pilmaier flew to Rome to conduct a street-corner press conference near the Vatican. Rome police, who said the group needed a permit for their activity, took them into custody and held them for three hours before releasing them. In the meantime an elderly Roman cardinal named José Saraiva Martins complained to reporters of a “conspiracy” against the Church, although he didn’t name the conspirators or their purpose. However, he did defend the secrecy practiced by the Church in abuse cases. “We should not be too scandalized if some bishops knew about it but kept it secret,” he said. “This is what happens in every family. You don’t wash your dirty laundry in public.”
The cardinal’s defensive impulse was shared by many, but only the activist William Donohue expressed it a comprehensive way. He argued that the majority of clergy abuse victims were males at or just beyond the age of puberty and therefore the scandal was a “homosexual crisis” and not a “pedophilia” crisis. And instead of trying to hold the Church accountable for crimes, said Donohue, the victims movement wanted to “weaken its moral authority. Why? Because of issues like abortion, gay marriage, and women’s ordination. That’s what’s really driving them mad, and that’s why they are on the hunt.”
Many, if not most of the people challenging the Church on sex abuse were persuaded that the Church was wrong about women and gays, but it would have been difficult to say the same number supported abortion rights. It would also be hard to determine whether they began their activism with these convictions, or developed them through an analysis of the Church’s problems. As scholars like Richard Sipe argued, Catholic thinking about gender, sex, and reproduction provided the inspiration for its response to abuse claims and untangling the two would be impossible. This was something Donohue and Sipe would agree upon, even if they found little common ground elsewhere.
* * *
Within the ranks of bishops, many in Europe and America defended the Pope. Sounding a bit like William Donohue, Bishop David Zubik of Oakland complained, “What gives me the ache is not only the hunger and thirst to rush to judgment without an honest look at the facts, but the absolute hatred … and disrespect for who we are and especially for what we believe.” In Rome, the official preacher to the papal household, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, compared criticism of the Pope to the historic persecution of the Jewish people. Cantalamessa quoted an anonymous “Jewish friend” who, he said, wrote that “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
The comment drew immediate objections from Jewish leaders and a Vatican official rushed to disassociate the Pope from Cantalamessa’s view. This statement was followed by orders from the Vatican requiring all allegations of abuse against priests to be reported to civil authorities, wherever they occurred. Twenty-six years into the crisis, this declaration marked the first time that such a policy was imposed on the worldwide Church. After it was issued, Benedict went to Malta where he met with eight men who alleged they had been abused as children, and was moved to tears by the encounter.
Benedict himself struggled to maintain the less-defended and remorseful pose he had begun to practice. He spoke of a Church under “attack” but acknowledged that repentance was necessary. He begged for the forgiveness of God and those who had been abused and he repeatedly promised to deal decisively with perpetrators. In what became a season of apology, the Pope also took control of the Legionaries of Christ and began their reorganization. He accepted half a dozen resignations from bishops a
round the world and announced that the Vatican would conduct its own investigation of the scandal in Ireland.
These responses, measured and somewhat contrite, continued as reports of clergy abuse came pouring into Rome from around the world. In Brazil, a national television network aired what it claimed was video of an elderly priest having sex with a young man of nineteen. The younger man had reportedly been involved with the priest since he was twelve. This priest and two others were suspended from their duties in the northern district of Alagosa while claims against them were being investigated. In Africa the bishop of Johannesburg used his Easter message to say that sexual abuse by priests was just as common in Africa as it was in more developed regions but it had not yet received attention. (Soon investigators would link Irish-born priests to child sexual abuse across the African continent.) In Belgium the archbishop of Bruges resigned when it was revealed he had sexually abused his nephew.
Coming in rapid succession, the revelations appalled even some of the more ardent supporters of the Church. Writer Peggy Noonan, who had all but deified John Paul II in her book John Paul the Great, decried “a rolling catastrophe” that “has lowered the standing, reputation and authority of the Church.”
Worse, for the Pope himself, were the documents that showed that when he was in charge of the Vatican office responsible for such complaints, he was well informed about extreme cases but did not respond to them with any urgency. This claim was at the heart of Jeffrey Anderson’s efforts to sue the Vatican in Wisconsin and as this case made progress through the courts the Vatican considered it a serious threat. In response, the Holy See hired a little-known attorney named Jeffrey Lena to represent it and its officials, not only in Wisconsin but in every American jurisdiction where they were named as defendants.
Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal Page 40
