Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [142]
Joe Smith told me, “Pilla felt he had earned the house through his time as bishop. His mom would stay out there with him. The Dolans were pissed at us and they should have been: the purpose was for priests to get away from the parish, and relax—a house in the woods with six bedrooms upstairs, a pond and a creek and tennis courts. Pilla wanted the property in his name. I went to see Pat McCartan, Jack Newman [another Jones Day top partner], and Peter Carfagna to figure a way to do this without all of us winding up in the can. It was the damnedest thing. Pilla had complete access to the place; he was afraid that when the next bishop came he would throw him out. He wanted the house in his name. Then it came out in the press, so we’re selling it. I think Peter Carfagna decided to help Pilla out of the jam. Pilla tells me, ‘You go out and clean it up.’ So I’m spending days in this fricking house, making sure it’s cleaned, bills paid, overseeing Jimmy jobs on repair … He wanted someone he could trust. He was so concerned about his image.”
The evidentiary motions fed deeper coverage in the Plain Dealer. “The Anthony M. Pilla Charitable Account wasn’t a secret fund but rather the former bishop’s personal savings account,” reported Mike Tobin, referring to a fund at $500,000 plus. Stephen Sozio of Jones Day, for the diocese, accused Joe Smith of trying “to impugn Bishop Pilla by arguing that the transactions … on which he actually advised the bishop were somehow untoward. They were not.”
But why was Pilla’s account secret? Why so many secret accounts? And how does a bishop amass half a million dollars plus in private savings?
“Smith was comfortable receiving additional compensation in this fashion because Bishop Pilla had a similar investment account,” wrote Kushner, implying a bishop in harmony with secret payments to upper-echelon personnel.
On June 14, 2007, Judge Aldrich ordered the diocese to provide many of the financial records the defense requested, though not the IRS findings. The files included payments of $27,200 to the family of a deacon who had lost his job at a high school for making sexual advances to girls. The disclosure of payments included a loan approved by Father Wright for $60,000 in church funds to another female secretary. Kushner was taking off the gloves as Jones Day lawyers positioned Pilla and Wright as victims.
Judge Aldrich framed the core issue of the approaching trial:
The defendants’ position is that while the evidence sought would cast doubt on the credibility of Bishop Pilla, Father Wright and the Diocese, it also and primarily serves to rebut the factual assertions Bishop Pilla and Father Wright make—that the Kickback Scheme could not have been authorized, was not authorized, and was not similar to common, questionable practices used by the Diocese.16
“Bishop Pilla, Father Wright, Joe Smith, they were all stealing,” Charlie Feliciano told the New York Times. “It was a corporate culture that was corrupt at almost all the top levels.”17 Disappointed that Pilla and Wright escaped indictment, Feliciano took comfort that his thwarted civil case of defrauding a religious charity would be distilled into a federal criminal proceeding.
A thorny legal issue arose: a tape recording as prosecution evidence.
In January 2004, with the diocese in damage control over the secret files, Anton Zgoznik was at a conference in Las Vegas. Stunned to hear Joe Smith had been sacked, Zgoznik made his first call to the priest who had blessed his marriage and later his infant son: John Wright, who confided that he had gotten an attorney. Hang in there, he recalled the priest saying. Remember that Joe worked for you. Anton Zgoznik felt alone on an island.18 When he reached out to Zrino Jukic, both men smelled trouble.