Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [103]
Throwing away their lives is how several Legion priests, unaware of Kunze’s gloom, had begun to feel about Maciel’s use of money. None of them knew that in October 1998 José Barba and Arturo Jurado filed a canonical case in Cardinal Ratzinger’s office, seeking Maciel’s expulsion for absolving “sins” of his victims in confession, an issue over which the CDF had a tribunal on which to rule. An official asked the men to keep silent. As they left, the Mexicans saw Ratzinger and knelt in respect, kissing his ecclesial ring.61
Accusations against the head of an international religious order were a rarity for the Vatican justice system. Each congregation has its competenza, or responsibility. Most congregations fielding requests from bishops or superiors to punish sex abusers did not have tribunals, legal arenas to pass judgment. The 1997 accusations should have put Maciel’s fate in the CDF, which has its own tribunal, apart from the major canonical courts at the Signatura, the Rota, and the Apostolic Penitentiary. Canon law is administrative and does not provide open trials or jury deliberations. Tribunal cases dragged on for years. The real issue was whether anyone in the Vatican wanted to take action against a high priest. The few cases to cross Kunze’s desk were passed to Castrillón.
The Maciel accusations also confronted the competenza of Cardinal Eduardo Martínez Somalo, the Spanish prefect of the congregation overseeing religious orders. His office, one floor above that of Clergy, should have launched an inquiry: Maciel was superior general of an order. Martínez Somalo had presided at a 1985 ordination of Legionaries at Rome’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica.
Because Maciel was highly favored by the Holy Father, the accusations concerned Sodano as papal chief of staff. John Paul’s 1994 praise of Maciel as “an efficacious guide to youth” now called his judgment into question.
Maciel had used large sums of money to insulate himself from justice.
In 1995, according to former Legion insiders, Maciel sent $1 million to John Paul, via Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz, when the pope traveled to Poland. As papal secretary, the Polish-born Dziwisz (pronounced Gee-Vish) was the man closest to John Paul for decades. Handling money was part of his job. In the Vatican’s 1980s alliance with Solidarity, Dziwisz persuaded Polish authorities to overlook customs duties on trucks with imported goods, many of which carried up to $2,000 cash, in small bills, to help the resistance.62 Dziwisz slept down the hall from John Paul in the papal living quarters.
Maciel had previously arranged for Flora Barragán to attend a private Mass said by John Paul II. The chapel in the Apostolic Palace seats forty people in a milieu graced by Michelangelo’s frescoes The Conversion of Saul and The Crucifixion of St. Peter.63 Mass there was a rare privilege for the visiting dignitary, like British prime minister Tony Blair and his family. “Mass would start at 7 a.m., and there was always someone in attendance: laypeople, or priests, or groups of bishops,” Dziwisz wrote.
They often found the pope kneeling in prayer with his eyes closed, in a state of total abandonment, almost of ecstasy, completely unaware of who was entering the chapel … For the laypeople, it was a great spiritual experience. The Holy Father attached extreme importance to the presence of the lay faithful.64
“I accompanied a wealthy family from Mexico for a private Mass and at the end, the family gave Dziwisz $50,000,” explains Father A, who left the Legion and spoke on background.