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By Root 1535 0

changes to the churches and the city put St. Peter in a clustering group. Marrone’s parish was an easy walk from the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, where Lennon said Mass. As the jolting news of the closures spread, a benefactor contacted Marrone to offer the parish $2 million to ensure its survival. Bob Marrone was thrilled. With permission from the diocese, he had financed new refurbishing for St. Peter’s 150th anniversary as the city’s oldest Catholic church and oldest pre–Civil War religious house, holding back the assessments rather than taking out a bank loan. Now he could pay $750,000 to the diocese, pay for demolition of the old school as part of a master plan for the physical plant, and put $1 million into the outreach ministries.

Lennon told him no, turn down the money. His parish would close.

Attorneys in the parish were familiar with the 1888 Mannix v. Purcell decision, in which Cincinnati parishes successfully appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, against a bishop’s plan to sell the churches to cover the debts of a church bank run by the bishop and his brother. But in the Toledo diocese, St. James parish in the rural farming community of Kansas, Ohio, had used Mannix in a civil case seeking to overturn their 2005 suppression by Bishop Leonard Blair. The state court sided with the Toledo bishop.41

The parishioners did not appeal the state decision. “The overriding issue was that the bishop padlocked the church and took the money,” explains Columbus attorney Nicholas A. Pittner, whose firm represented the parish. “The parishioners who contributed money were beneficiaries of a trust. We argued that the bishop, as a trustee, couldn’t appropriate the funds. The bishop argued that yes, he was a trustee, but under canon law the beneficiary was a juridic person”—the parish and bishop as one. Pittner continues: “What is a juridic person? The state court of appeals was loath to say that a juridic person is a fiction. Whose law do you apply? Is it Ohio property law? Or is there a federal right to have your claim decided on a body of law other than canon law?”

“We spent more than $100,000 in legal fees, trying to get the property back,” Virginia Hull, a St. James parish leader, told me. “The $77,957 we had in the parish account all went to Bishop Blair. The diocese provided our attorney with statements that showed that most of our parish funds went to pay the attorney representing them against us. They offered us use of the church for meetings or social activities but not worship. The Methodist church has provided us space and a time to have our Sunday liturgy. A married Franciscan priest drives in to say Mass and provide us the sacraments. We used to have about 160 people each Sunday. Now we have about 45. Some people have gone to parishes in nearby towns, others left the faith. We did not want to join a church seven miles away; we do a lot of outreach to the needy right here. The diocese tore down our church. They allowed us to keep the steeple and bell. The land is for sale. We feel closer to God than we ever have. I don’t think the bishops know what a community is.”

Virginia Hull’s words describe Bishop Lennon, the self-taught canonist who used the Suppression strategy that backfired in Boston on his new territory. “The Diocese of Cleveland fails to provide parishioners with the audited financial information needed to assess the economic state of the diocese,” comments Western Michigan University professor of accountancy Jack Ruhl, an authority on diocesan financial statements. Weighing the disclosures by the diocesan Finance Office, Foundation, and Catholic Charities, he says: “What is the dollar amount of diocesan assets and liabilities? What is the diocesan liability for post-retirement obligations? Is there any liability for clergy abuse settlements? While Bishop Lennon did publish a ‘Report to the Community’ in 2009 that listed total parish revenues and expenses for two years, the information was unaudited. The Finance Office has been so narrowly defined that financial reports for it exclude ‘troublesome