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someone asked if the clustering would see a shift from the city “out in the suburbs and rural parishes.” He said, “I don’t see where that needs at all to be, you know, exclusionary of the—you know, the Church and the City. One of the first things I did when I came here, I read all those documents … I did not see where clustering a group of parishes in a section of the city precludes relationships with the parishes in the suburbs … I think the two can go along, you know, side by side.” To a similar question, he responded, “In this year’s financial statements to the diocese, again sent to everyone, shows that forty-two percent [of parishes] are operating in the red. So I think that clustering at least since mid-summer if not before, I have consistently spoken that the main reasons are threefold. Demographic shift, number one. Number two, is the whole question of financial viability, and number three is the decreasing number of priests.”

Out of the mangled sentence structure, Lennon at least acknowledged what he did not say to FutureChurch leaders: the priest shortage was a factor.

VICTIMS FOR THE PROSECUTION

Judge Ann Aldrich, who would preside over the Smith-Zgoznik trial, had been appointed to the federal bench in 1980 by President Carter. With a law degree from New York University, staff experience at the Federal Communications Commission, and twenty-seven years on the federal bench, Judge Aldrich was nearly eighty. Despite her reputation as a liberal with a sympathy for civil liberties, she denied the request by Zgoznik’s counsel to learn whether the prosecution had given immunity to any witnesses.

In another motion seeking evidence, Smith’s attorney, Philip Kushner, took a knife to the diocese’s Achilles’ heel: “The indictment takes no position regarding whether Father Wright was authorized to pay Mr. Smith additional compensation, or to not disclose it on the [diocese’s] financial records, or to conceal it from others within the Diocese.” Kushner made no issue of Smith’s $270,000 off-the-books compensation. Smith, however, was accused of taking $784,624 in other fees. “Father Wright was not duped,” declaimed Kushner.

[Wright] is a financially sophisticated attorney. He arranged for other Diocesan employees to receive compensation through the Zgoznik Entities, so that it would not be disclosed on the [diocese’s] books and records.8

In 1996, while financial and legal secretary, Wright also became CEO of the Catholic Cemeteries Association, which had 170 employees and seventeen sites. Wright left the chancery in 2000 to handle Cemeteries full-time. “Cemeteries was a cash cow,” Charlie Feliciano told me with a shrug. People buy in, die, loved ones follow. Kushner’s motions suggested he owned a map of where evidentiary bodies lay buried. Moreover, the digest of an FBI interview with Zrino Jukic stated that

the reason this money was given to Smith was because he was invited to be on the Board of Directors for Blue Cross Blue Shield and other companies; however, Bishop Pilla would not permit him to sit on these boards. Because of this, Smith was going to leave the Diocese while he still had the opportunity to pursue other more lucrative business ventures. Jukic went on to say that Marilyn Ruane, secretary of the Diocese Cemeteries Association, was on the payroll of Resultant Corporation but didn’t work there. Ruane was Father Wright’s girlfriend.9

“John was in love with Marilyn,” says Smith matter-of-factly. “I did Marilyn’s tax returns. John met Marilyn at St. Bernadette’s. I always thought he’d leave the priesthood and marry after his dad died, but he stayed a priest.”

“The defense of this case centers on whether Mr. Zgoznik believed he was authorized to make the payments to Mr. Smith and what the Diocese knew about those payments,” asserted Zgoznik’s attorney, Robert Rotatori, in another evidentiary request. Certain payments “were, in large part, for Father Wright” because Wright’s “friend … needed work.”10 Marilyn Ruane began work at Cemeteries in 1997 on a salary of $31,500, which ramped up to $81,000