• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

After Kagan’s nomination, the acting Solicitor General, the Justice Department, and the State Department sent an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court, arguing that the case should go back to the federal appeals bench for having misunderstood Oregon tort law.20 The Supreme Court did not accept the argument; the case was slowly moving forward as this book went to press.

BORRÉ AND THE NUNCIO

As Carlo Gullo sent ideas and draft passages for the appeal to Pope Benedict via e-mail, Peter Borré’s contact through the Secretariat of State, after several meetings, suggested that Borré might wish to meet with an archbishop who did have interest in these issues, as they fell in a general sense within his competenza. This was Pietro Sambi, the papal nuncio to the United States.

In April 2010, as he caught a flight from Logan Airport to Reagan National, Borré realized that he was on the last leg of his journey: I keep trying to find something redemptive in the plight of the Roman Catholic Church, whether in Rome’s congregations, which I have frequented, the many American dioceses which I visit, or the dozens of Boston parishes where I have assisted. But today I see wreckage all around, a deepening despair among good people, prelates and laity, a widening divide between the flock in the pews and the hierarchical superiors.

The Congregation for the Clergy had denied every single parishioner appeal against parish closings of which he was aware during the last decade, including the seventy-five of which he had direct knowledge. The Signatura had denied every one of the eleven parishioner appeals from Boston with the same Olympian language in as many decrees. Lawyers for abuse victims were clobbering the church in America because of arrogant decisions by bishops, most of them dating back many years, while in Rome a legal arrogance blunted the very people the church so desperately needed, people who loved the faith and gave in its support—people now spending funds to save their churches. These weren’t abortion activists with hidden cameras.

For all of his fuming about church reformers seeking dialogue with bishops, Borré had started thinking about Seán O’Malley, his own archbishop. “Why don’t you try to talk to him?” his wife, Mary Beth, the political consultant, said one day. The thought of bipartisanship, a consensus of some kind, appealed to him. Do what Congress can’t: sit down, talk it out, find a real solution.

Borré was convinced that O’Malley had no idea how to rebuild the finances. The money was going down because people didn’t trust the leadership. Law had begun that poisoning; Lennon worsened it. If O’Malley would show some flexibility on the closed parishes, Borré was willing to help swing the public relations his way. But he knew the cardinal considered him an adversary, if not an outright enemy. As the cab dropped him at the stately embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, opposite the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory, Borré realized that any endgame to benefit the cause he had advanced would probably rely on the man he was about to meet.

Pietro Sambi had wavy silver hair and a firm handshake. As they stood in the foyer, lined with oil paintings of popes and a photograph of the nuncio presenting his credentials to President Obama, Borré knew that he had previously been the Holy See’s envoy in Jerusalem, a diplomatic minefield.

As they exchanged amenities in Italian, he could see that Sambi was delighted to converse in his native tongue. The nuncio’s eyes lit up at the sight of Borré’s new iPad. He handed it to the archbishop, who pulled up The Divine Comedy. Knowing that Sambi came from the district of Romagna, next to Emilia, where Borré’s maternal grandparents had grown up, Borré casually mentioned that Cardinal O’Malley needed to cross the Rubicon.21

“The river Rubicon runs through my village!” Sambi said, smiling.

“Yes, Excellency, I know.”

Sambi handed him the iPad. As they walked into his office, the nuncio said, “The cardinal thinks you’re a wolf in sheep