Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [113]
Not so Ed Egan. The cardinal who adored opera courted donors at small fund-raisers by playing piano. Egan wouldn’t dream of emulating O’Malley by posting archdiocesan financial statements. “Do we want to leave ourselves open?” Egan mused to the Times, rolling his eyes. “Oh, what fun people could have.” Church officials said Egan had erased the deficit, paying down $40 million of internal debt at $3 million annually, but there was no way to check.5 When Egan suppressed Our Lady of Vilnius, a Lithuanian parish in Manhattan, he called in the pastor, told him his church was being padlocked as they spoke, and that ended the 107-year-old parish.6 Bad news would pass.
Three Boston area parishes that filed canonical appeals to Rome had been occupied twenty-four hours at a time since 2004, despite Clergy’s rejection of their requests. Two other parishes had had their appeals rejected by the Boston archdiocese for failure to file in thirty days; their appeals never went to Rome, but people slept in the pews anyway, making five vigil parishes in 2006.
For an appeal to the Apostolic Signatura the groups needed well-positioned counsel. Borré saw that only twelve people were qualified as advocates at the Signatura listed in the Holy See’s Annuario Pontificio. Only two lay canonists had the standing to bring a recourse, or ultimate appeal, to the Holy Father. One was Martha Wegan, the Austrian who had filed the 1998 case against Maciel in Ratzinger’s tribunal; the other, Carlo Gullo, an Italian, taught canon law at Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, which was affiliated with Opus Dei. (Gullo insisted to Borré he was not an Opus member.)
Born in 1942 in Tuscany, Carlo Gullo was married with four grown children. After law school at the University of Messina, in Sicily, he had taken a canon law degree from the Gregorian in 1968. Canon lawyers gained a role in Italy’s legal system with the 1929 Lateran Pacts by which Mussolini gave the church authority over marriage in civil affairs. Divorce was illegal until the 1970s; dissolving a marriage required an annulment. In 2002 the Pontifical Lateran University had seven hundred students pursuing degrees in canon law, most of them laywomen and laymen. Canonists could earn $20,000 or more by resolving property issues in complex annulments.7 Gullo practiced with his daughter, Alessia, one of the youngest advocates admitted at the bar of the Signatura. She also oversaw the computer system in her father’s home office.
“Dottor Borré”—Doctor—was the salutation in Gullo’s e-mails, while Borré’s opened “Egregio Avvocato,” Distinguished Attorney. In their get-acquainted conversations, Borré spoke Italian, since his counterpart did not speak English. Alessia, who was conversant in English, occasionally assisted on arcane points of law. In the exchanges with Gullo, Borré was summoned back to his Latin studies as a schoolboy in Rome, for Gullo wrote his briefs in Latin. On the telephone Gullo spoke so softly that Borré at times strained to hear. Gullo was an elegant voice in explaining how hard it was to reverse an archbishop’s decree. But, it had happened some years ago when a Chicago parish persuaded the Signatura to overturn a suppression by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. Borré asked if he could read the decision.
“This is classified,” Gullo replied gravely.
Borré was curious about the give-and-take among the cardinals and judges during Signatura proceedings.
“I have no idea,” said Gullo.
He explained that it was forbidden for the advocates to be in the room when the judges met. The Signatura had twenty-five canonists, most of them cardinals (including Egan of New York) on its board of consultors. The Rome-based judges, led by the prefect and assisted by the court secretary and a “promoter of justice,” constituted a tribunal called the Congressio, which screened appeals to determine which should go to the full bench. The Signatura