Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [191]
The website LegionaryFacts.org began posting defenses of Maciel—and criticism of the accusers—after the 1997 Hartford Courant report exposing Maciel’s abuse of Legion youths. Father Owen Kearns, publisher of the Legion-owned National Catholic Register, derided the victims for “a coordinated conspiracy to smear Father Maciel.” Kearns on LegionaryFacts.org had called Vaca “a proud, status-conscious man angered and disappointed at his professional failures,” who had wanted “greater power in the Legion.” But Vaca had resigned in his 1976 letter to Maciel.
Vaca had been a counselor for disabled students at York College in the City University of New York, on the fourth year of a five-year tenure track position, when he was terminated in 1999. He believed the Legion’s “attack on my credibility and character” caused the college not to renew the contract.
LegionaryFacts.org came down from the Internet in 2006 after the Vatican punished Maciel. Four years later, Kearns issued a general apology to Gerald Renner and me for criticizing our Hartford Courant report, but he did not name any victims.
Corcuera and Vaca said cordial good-byes. The Legion superior promised to work on the compensation issue. At his request, Vaca provided names and contact information for Maciel’s victims in Mexico.
Corcuera’s very presence signaled the influence of Benedict and Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the canon lawyer at the CDF who had worked for two years taking the testimony of the aging men Maciel had coerced as boys, hearing their accounts of oral sex, sodomy, and masturbation rituals. As part of its “takeover,” the Vatican was prodding the Legion into a position similar to that of many bishops who clenched their teeth and wrote large checks to lawyers representing abuse survivors. As the Vatican, in its soft-glove way, pushed the Legion toward financial reparations, in Rome, Jeff Anderson filed suit against the order on June 16, 2010, in Connecticut, on behalf of Raúl González Lara, Maciel’s older natural son from Mexico, who alleged a long history of incest and emotional distress by his father, with certain episodes taking place in America.17
SUING THE HOLY SEE
Ironically, as the Vatican was prodding the Legion on the issue of compensation to Maciel’s older victims, the Holy See was arguing that it deserved immunity from a case Jeff Anderson had filed in Oregon. He had named the Holy See as one of the defendants.18 The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act set limits on whether a foreign government can be sued in U.S. courts; it restricts intervention by the White House and State Department. The priest in question had a record of abusing youths in his native Ireland before his transfer to America. Anderson and his Oregon cocounsel William Barton argued that civil responsibility extended beyond the religious order leader and local bishop to the Vatican. The Holy See hired a California attorney, Jeffrey Lena, to defend the case. Lena’s motion to dismiss failed; the Oregon court ordered discovery. Lena appealed to the federal court, which sided with the state court. Lena petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a hearing.
The lawsuit asserted that the Holy See—the government of the sovereign monarchy, as opposed to the Vatican as administrator of the city-state—engaged in widespread commercial activity and control over its religious servants. The discovery request drew upon the research of the departed priests Patrick Wall, Tom Doyle, and Richard Sipe.
Each Bishop keeps track of how much money it obtains for the Holy See through the Peter’s Pence solicitation … Plaintiff made requests of information about Quinquennial Reports. These reports are required by the Holy See to be sent every five years from each Bishop and each religious order superior. The Holy See requires that the document list the financial well-being of the diocese … [Religious orders] must detail for the Holy See the financial condition of the Order, including all property acquired, whether any gains or losses have been sustained, whether there is debt, and whether all temporal goods