Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [54]
On the last Sunday in May, Peter Borré and his mother-in-law went to St. Catherine of Siena for a Mass that was packed with people wanting to know what Father Bowers would say. Reporters were following the story of a parish struggling to stay alive. Bowers was so upset he barely got through the liturgy. He was also afraid. Pitting himself against the archbishop would do his career no good. After the service, he opened the floor for discussion. “Let’s pray the rosary,” a woman offered. But people were crying and angry; they needed to talk.
Rose Mary Piper gave her son-in-law a prod of the elbow: “You shoot off your mouth about everything under the sun. So say something about this.” Peter Borré rose and suggested they send a petition to the archbishop, asking him to meet with them. People applauded. A haggard Father Bowers said, “You’re volunteering to help?”
“I just did,” said Borré, a little unsure just why.
With help from Mary Beth Borré, the lapsed Catholic, Peter and several members of the parish gathered 3,500 signatures. On a warm June day, Peter and two ladies from the parish entered the chancery in Brighton, opposite Boston College. A receptionist sat behind Plexiglas. The tension in the place was palpable. Borré imagined the stress on people here, coming to work over the grueling eighteen months to date. He told the lady they had a petition for the archbishop. She eyed him nervously. Just then a priest entered the foyer. In his mannered way Borré explained the purpose of their visit. “We’re not interested in petitions,” the priest uttered.
Borré asked what they should do with the petitions. The cleric, whom he recognized as a chancery official, retorted, “You should go fuck yourself.”
As the priest withdrew, leaving two startled ladies and Borré to swallow his anger, they went out into the summer day. He got behind the wheel of the car, his rage rising like a volcano. He considered Romans the most anticlerical people on earth, a facet of long memory from Pio Nono and the Vatican’s history as an overlord. Borré’s trust in a modern hierarchy buckled. Mary Beth heard the fury in his voice when he called from the car, saying he’d just been f-bombed by a jerk in a Roman collar. In the days that followed he distilled his anger into a plan of attack that would send him back to Rome to confront a power structure he had once held in awe.
CHAPTER 4
THE VATICAN, THE VIGILS,
AND THE REAL ESTATE
When Seán O’Malley reached Boston he was an emergency politician for the church, a specialist in damaged dioceses. As a young priest he had never envisioned such a role for himself: the clerical culture was intact. Born in 1944 in Lakewood, Ohio, and raised in western Pennsylvania, O’Malley entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, a branch of the Franciscans who work with the poor. He earned a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese literature at Catholic University of America, and stayed on in Washington, D.C., as founder of Centro Católico Hispano to give immigrants educational and legal help. In 1984 John Paul II made him a bishop and appointed him to the diocese of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
In 1993 the Vatican sent O’Malley to the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, which had a large Portuguese community and was reeling from the aftershocks of the notorious James Porter. Legal settlements for 131 survivors of the imprisoned ex-priest cost $13.2 million, about half of it paid by insurance