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the church, stuck to his guns. Eschewing the “cafeteria Catholicism” of those who selectively follow church rules, he knew that by church law his second marriage was illicit. For all of his misgivings about annulments, he sat in the pew with his core of obedience, unable to shake a sense of being unworthy, an ironic law-and-order Catholic at Communion time, believing in the divine essence of the church and salvation in Jesus Christ, waiting, as if in Dante’s Purgatorio, for absolution on some distant day.

All men, though in a vague way, apprehend

a good their souls may rest in, and desire it;

each, therefore, strives to reach his chosen end.30

After Senator Kerry gained the nomination, Mary Beth was working in the garden of their Florida vacation home when the idea of George W. Bush getting reelected filled her with nausea; she telephoned a friend in the Kerry campaign to say, “I’m in.” In short order she went to work in the Florida field organization for the presidential campaign.

Peter, gathering information about the archdiocese’s financial problems, was in a slow burn. For to him, the numbers did not add up.

CHAPTER 2

ORIGINS OF THE VATICAN

FINANCIAL SYSTEM

On July 22, 2010, the Vatican announced a $250,000 gift by Pope Benedict XVI to rebuild a school in Port-au-Prince that had been lost in Haiti’s horrific earthquake.1 The Holy Father’s international role in helping “the least of these” arose in the last century. But the Holy See is not a wealthy country like one of the Arab oil states. Its largesse relies on donors, large and small.

Peter’s Pence is the Vatican’s most important collection; it is taken once a year in late June, in parishes across the developed world. Promoted as the pope’s fund for his assistance to people in dire need, Peter’s Pence in 2009 took in $82.5 million.2 Despite the Great Recession, the figure marked a nearly $7 million boost from 2008. Peter’s Pence is by no means the only stream of financial support to the pope. In America, for example, the Papal Foundation (whose board members commit to paying $1 million over ten years) supports church projects in poor countries, under Vatican guidance, with gifts that range from $15,000 to $75,000, as listed on the foundation’s website.3

Although the annual yield of Peter’s Pence is published, how the Holy See uses those funds, the charitable outlay, is much less clear. A small office in the Secretariat of State in Vatican City tabulates the donations, sends letters of thanks to donors, and routes funds to other offices for disbursement. I sought information on Peter’s Pence spending from the USCCB press office, which referred me to the Washington, D.C., office of the papal nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who did not respond. In Rome, Alessandro Speciale, a correspondent for GlobalPost, the online foreign news service, reports: “A significant part of it goes to bishops from poor dioceses when they meet the pope in their ad limina (every fifth year) meetings and discuss projects they have for schools, hospitals, student grants, etcetera. Part of the money is channeled to an office called Cor Unum, part of it is spent directly by the Secretariat of State and part of it [is spent] through [the] apostolic office, which apparently deals mostly with Rome and Italy. Part of it is also used for the personal charity of the pope.”4

Of the three major outlays of Peter’s Pence funding, only Cor Unum publishes annual data. Cor Unum has several projects. The Sahel Foundation founded by John Paul II deals with agriculture and erosion; the Populorum Progressio assists indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2009 Cor Unum reported an outlay for emergency relief of $1.87 million in twenty-five countries; $2.3 million in general assistance for projects in forty-five countries; $2.3 million through the Sahel Foundation in nine countries; and $2.13 million spent in twenty countries in the initiative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Cor Unum’s four allocations—roughly $8.65 million—account for 10.5 percent of the $82.5