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The Boston archdiocese was generous to people at the top. The secretary of education earned $292,500, according to the Globe. Parochial school enrollment had dropped from 50,000 students in 2007 to 46,000 in 2010.24 As parishes strained to support schools, the top educator earned $42,500 more than the superintendent of New York City’s public schools, which had 1.1 million students. The associate superintendent of Boston parochial schools earned $176,000. Why such salaries with money leaking like a sieve?

When Borré returned to Washington for his next meeting with Sambi, he was angry about the archdiocesan finances. He gave a memorandum on the matter to the nuncio, whose interest piqued at the numbers and analysis. Sambi the diplomat kept his thoughts close to the vest as he absorbed the information. Borré’s idea on reform began with restoring priests’ morale; but mobilizing them to help shore up finances turned on changes at the top and slashing big salaries.

Father Bob Bowers, once the pastor at Borré’s now-dormant parish, had taken a leave of absence from the priesthood in 2005. Bowers had gone through a long disillusionment before joining the Paulist Center, just off Boston Commons, as an outreach minister to disaffected Catholics who were inching back toward the faith. Disillusioned with Vatican officials as “very, very old men who can’t grasp what’s happening,” Bowers nevertheless wanted Pope Benedict on the job, to work for healing. His own job was to “help people deal with conflict better, help them realize that forgiveness sets them free and that letting go can make them whole again.”25 Since the bruising loss of his parish, Bowers’s goal was “never to get people to return to participation in the church. My goal is very simple: to listen. That is where God is.”26

Borré, who had been out of touch with his former pastor, was ambivalent about reconciliation after six years of pushing at the rock of church officialdom. Sitting with Sambi in the nuncio’s office in Washington, Borré wanted the Boston archdiocese to slash the six-figure salaries at the top and shed jobs that were not necessary. Here was a religious charity swimming in red ink.

Sambi listened. He read the document carefully as Borré reviewed the high points. Borré’s blood was racing as he compared St. Frances Cabrini parish in Scituate, with all that rich waterfront acreage, the good people in their sixth year of vigil now, and the St. Peter parish in Cleveland, where the people had let Lennon take over the building, splitting off to form a new parish, taking their priest with them. Were these examples of schism, offered Borré—of people splitting from the church in breakaway sects, like the Society of St. Pius X? He left it there for Sambi to chew on.

This is the legacy of Bishop Lennon, he told Sambi. The disasters of Reconfiguration were a huge factor in the sapping of money from the Boston archdiocese. He was doing the same thing in Cleveland.

“Lennon is protected,” said Sambi.

“By Cardinal Law?” replied Borré.

The slight shrug said it all.

Law protected Lennon so that Law’s disastrous handling of the money would be sealed away.

After a third meeting with Sambi, Borré saw little chance that O’Malley would make a first move, or any reciprocal gesture. Lennon, however, had become an issue for Sambi, as the nuncio told him of angry letters from priests in Cleveland. Sambi said he would authorize an apostolic visitation, an investigation of Lennon by another prelate. The lesson of Boston was that if priests revolt against a bishop, his chances of survival go down.

The larger lesson that Peter Borré carried out of his final meeting with the nuncio was that the power structure did not know how to change. So many well-educated Catholics who had the skills to rebuild a listing church were shunned by bishops fearful of facing the failures of the hierarchy. The scandalous handling of money was symptomatic of a larger institutional breakdown. The layers of denial in the Romanità mind were as thick