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By Root 1467 0

The $50,000 payment was in 1997, the year Maciel was publicly accused. “We arranged things like that,” the priest said of his role as go-between. Given the pope’s ascetic lifestyle and accounts of his charitable giving, such funds could have been routed to a deserving cause. Did Dziwisz salt away some for himself? His book says nothing about donations and does not mention the Legion. Father A brooded about the Legion’s pipeline to the pope: “This happened all the time. Dziwisz provided frequent appearances for Legion supporters, which was huge” in helping the order.65 “It was always cash. And in dollars. You’d need too many notes for lire. Even in Mexico they preferred using dollars over pesos.”

Maciel threw out the stops for a lavish reception in 1998 honoring Dziwisz’s elevation as a bishop, down to the festive Mexican music played, Mariachi-style, by a small Legionaries’ orchestra.

Father B, who also steered payments to Dziwisz for Legion patrons, says, “It’s not so much that you’re paying him for a person to go to Mass. You’re saying, ‘These people are fervent, it’s good for them to meet the pope.’ The expression is opere de carità: ‘We’re making an offering for your works of charity.’ In fact, you don’t know where the money is going. It’s an elegant way of giving a bribe.”

On assignment for National Catholic Reporter, I tried to reach Dziwisz, now a cardinal in Kraców, for comment. Iowana Hoffman, a Polish journalist in New York, translated a letter with questions and faxed it to Dziwisz’s press secretary; he reported back that the cardinal “does not have time for an interview”—nor, indeed, for a statement defending John Paul’s use of the funds.66

Father B, who called the gifts an elegant bribe, explains why he left the Legion: “I woke up and asked: Am I giving my life to serve God, or one man who had his problems? It was not worth consecrating myself to Maciel.” Cardinals and bishops who said Mass for Legionaries received payment of $2,500 and up, according to the importance of the event, the men said.

Do large sums of cash to a Vatican official constitute bribery? The money from Maciel went to heads and midlevel people at congregations through the 1990s. Such exchanges are not bribes in the view of canonist Nicholas Cafardi, the dean emeritus of Duquesne University Law School in Pittsburgh. Cafardi, who has worked as a legal consultant for many bishops, responded to a general question about large donations to priests or officials in the Vatican. Under canon 1302, a large financial gift to an official “would qualify as a pious cause,” says Cafardi. The Vatican has no oversight office; funds should be reported to the cardinal-vicar for Rome. An expensive gift, like a car, need not be reported. “That’s how I read the law,” Cafardi explains. “I know of no exceptions. Cardinals do have to report gifts for pious causes. If funds are given for the official’s personal charity, that is not a pious cause and need not be reported.”

“Maciel wanted to buy power,” says Father A, in explaining why he left the Legion. Morality was at issue. “It got to a breaking point for me [over] a culture of lying. The superiors know they’re lying and they know that you know. They lie about money, where it comes from, where it goes, how it’s given.”

With prescient calculation, Maciel had sunk money into the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes by paying for the renovation of the residence of its prefect from 1976 to 1983, the late Cardinal Eduardo Francisco Pironio, according to Father A. Raised in Argentina, the youngest of twenty-two children born of Italian émigré parents, Cardinal Pironio enjoyed meals and socializing with the Legionaries. Renovating his home was “a pretty big resource, expensive, widely known at upper levels of the Legion,” says the priest. Maciel wanted Pironio’s approval of the Legion constitution, which included the private vows—never to speak ill of Maciel, or the superiors, and to weed out internal critics. The private vows were Maciel’s chief tool to conceal his sexual abuses, to secure lockstep