Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [60]
Residents experience this use of subsidiarity as undiluted buck-passing. One elderly couple, living in a house owned by an confraternity of lay persons associated with the Church of the Most Holy Name of the Virgin in Trajan's Forum, appealed to the archbishopric for help when the old rent of 250,000 lire, which in 1993-1994 had been raised to 400,000 (half of what the confraternity had originally demanded), now suddenly went up to 1,200,000 lire-a sum so out of their range that building a new home in one of the more distant suburbs, which they decided to do, would eventually prove an economically more feasible alternative and also gave them legal grounds for obtaining a temporary extension (proroga) of their current lease. Their offer to pay a rent of 6oo,ooo lire, presumably made on the logic that they had been able to halve the original rent once before, was summarily refused this time. The archbishopric officials told the couple that they knew nothing of the case, because it was only the affair of the confraternity to which the building belonged. But the confraternity sent them back to the archbishopric! The wife, puzzled as to the source of her woes, and perhaps reluctant to voice accusations while they were still living in the building, told me, "I don't think it's really the priests who are kicking us out." Other residents disagreed, and could cite numerous precedents; priests' and lay brothers' moral responsibility is always diffused among their own all-toofallible consciences.
Far more relevant is her puzzlement itself, especially as she was described to me by a local intellectual as alert and intelligent. It reflects an effect, intended or otherwise, of that structure: the residents are perpetually baffled and frustrated in their attempts to appeal to higher authority, both because doctrinally it may not interfere and because practically it is nowhere to be seen. As the distraught woman pointed out, the church had no right to sell these properties, because they were bequests (lasciti) explicitly made to the church-but in practice, while the terms of the bequests were that the houses should be made available to the needy, "they want to do them up for people who can pay [a high rent] instead." The churches and confraternities can resort to a series of legal maneuvers to achieve such a goal. For example, a confraternity based in Bergamo got around the legal restrictions on the sale of a similar Monti property by arguing that they needed extra money to restructure their headquarters, which they successfully argued should be considered a charitable use of the resulting income; after they had sold the property in question to a large real estate company, the rent went up to five times its starting amount over a period of ten years. In yet another case, one of the evictees told me, "If you could see with what a phalanx of lawyers I went there [to the court appeal against eviction]," I would have realized that the confraternities and others possessed "powers that cannot be touched."
In the case just mentioned, in 1995, the couple had been technically wellqualified to compete for one of the apartments made available by the city authorities. They could demonstrate need: the husband was unemployed, the wife earned little, the children were young, and they faced imminent eviction. But without the right connections, said the wife-a recommendation (raccomandazione) from someone with authority in city hall-they were unable to compete. "It's always that way," she lamented.