Render Unto Rome

by Jason Berry

  Lennon approached Cleveland like a banker redlining loans in poor neighborhoods. As chief executive officer he would follow the trail of prosperity, shift priests to suburban parishes, recapitalize the diocese. Shuttering inner-city churches and historic gems in old enclaves was pragmatism. In Boston he had suppressed wealthy parishes in order to sell churches in plugging a deficit that trailed back to the 1990s, exacerbated by the abuse cases. In Cleveland he would prevent deficits with early, tough chopping-block decisions.

  “He was clueless about Cleveland philanthropy,” explains Sister Christine Schenk. “In Los Angeles, the archdiocese does an annual collection for the urban parishes. We mentioned that at our meeting with Lennon. But he came with his own mind-set to do it his way without recognition of the safety net woven by Church in the City. This diocese was used to interactive decision making. Some parishes needed to close, perhaps fifteen rather than fifty-two.”

  Lennon sketched his logic in a sequence of short pages resembling a PowerPoint presentation via the diocesan website. The Catholic population had declined by 19 percent since 1975. Mass attendance was down 56 percent, to 29 percent.27 Despite the cost of maintaining inner-city churches, Cleveland had a tradition of people from the suburbs driving in for Sunday Mass in the old neighborhoods, which undergirded Pilla’s Church in the City program. Pilla’s plan became Banquo’s ghost for Lennon: he could not escape the urban church in the memory of Catholic Cleveland. Instead of summoning the hope inherent in faith as an appeal for hard-times generosity, Lennon tried to sell people on fear.

  AN OVERVIEW OF KEY DIOCESAN REALITIES FINANCIAL EROSION

  • Some parishes are using savings to fund deficit spending

  • Deferred maintenance of many parish facilities is a big and increasing concern

  • Catholic assets are being used in our Diocese just for the purpose of maintaining more buildings than we can realistically support due to the changed demographics

  • 60 parishes have negative net savings (liabilities exceed savings)—27 do not involve mortgage debt

  • 17 other parishes have positive net savings of less than $60,000 (low reserves for emergencies)

  • Parishes own these assets; yet, it is the Diocese that is compelled to respond to the emergencies28

  A parish owned its assets but, like a slave in the antebellum South, it did not own itself. This reality radiated from Boston to New Orleans, from Scranton to New York City, back again to Cleveland and elsewhere as shuttered parishes joined Peter Borré’s Council of Parishes. Canon law calls the parish a “juridic person.” Conflicting opinions of canon law in diocesan bankruptcy cases demonstrate that the bishop has the power to suppress a juridic person, take its assets, and issue a death warrant for sale or demolition of the physical plant.

  FutureChurch flew into action with e-mails to area parishes and information kits, matching sympathetic canon lawyers with protesting parishes.

  In Cleveland, twenty-eight Catholic churches had already been designated as historical landmarks. Under Lennon’s order, eight would be closed. “St. Casimir, one of the biggest and most beautiful churches in the diocese, also learned its Polish Masses will be coming to an end,” reported the Plain Dealer.

  “St. Ignatius is everything a Cleveland diocese should be,” said Cleveland City councilman Jay Westbrook. “It’s like the United Nations here. They have an integrated school and church. This is where the diocese should be taking its stand.”

  “Understandably, there will be sadness and upset,” Lennon said in a statement posted on the diocese’s Web site. “There may well be questioning why us and not them. And even for some there will be anger.”29

  The “upset” extended to Father Joseph Mecir, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus in Slavic Village, who said in a sermon, “This is a real blow to us. We were not expecting this at all. We are the only parish in Slavic Village whose bills are paid. We are not in the red at all. We have no idea why this came about.”30

  Lennon’s plan, for all of its foreboding tone, had no data from urban planners, public officials, priests, or nuns. It was Lennon all the way.

  AN OVERVIEW OF KEY DIOCESAN REALITIES SENSE OF URGENCY NEEDED

  • In total, the finances of the Diocese and most parishes are not in a crisis state … today

  • However, there are indicators of immediate or pending crisis for many of our entities

  • All parishes must proceed with a sense of urgency before there are more crises than we can handle

  • Often the process of closing parishes appears to be about finances

  • Granted, finances often create the final sense of urgency

  • However, finances are a trailing indicator of stress in a parish

  • The leading indicators and real causes are the demographic shifts that began long ago in our area, continued for many years, are still occurring at present31

  Removing icons, statues, and paintings was like “ripping out copper plumbing in foreclosed houses,” bristled Councilman Westbrook. “If the diocese is going to make closing announcements and just let the community suffer the consequences, it will require us to enact stricter legislation.”32

  Michael Polensek, a city councilman for more than thirty years, represented Collinwood, a lakefront ward and ethnic quilt that included old Slovenian streets where he had been raised. “I went to see the bishop,” Councilman Polensek told me. “Even though I’m a lifelong Catholic I made it clear this would be a massive fight and it would not be pretty. Lennon said, ‘The numbers aren’t there, the flock has moved.’ Many of the figures I wouldn’t dispute.”

  But Polensek knew the four parishes in his ward were in the black. “They were maintaining the racial stability,” he said. “Here’s my Catholic Church telling me we’re going to vamoose from the old, the poor, the indigent, and above all a racially diverse neighborhood. Is that the message you really want to send? Lennon is not very warm. I don’t know if the diocese is better off financially because you’ve got so many angry people. He’s caused so much animosity.”

  Lennon was flanked by police officers when he went to officiate at the final Mass of the Hungarian church, St. Emeric. A group called Endangered Catholics protested outside, singing “God Bless America.”

  “The St. Emeric community wanted to buy the church for a cultural center,” continued Polensek. “He wouldn’t sell it to them. It’s that kind of in-your-face stuff that’s so insulting and unsettling. These are people who fled from Europe, came here for religious freedom; I heard the stories as a kid of men and women who carried the bricks and raised the money. He comes here without respect to knock down churches. Some of these architectural gems were abandoned. My great-grandmother’s church, St. Andrew’s at Fifty-fifth and Superior, I drove down there when it was demolished. They didn’t even take the bells out of the tower. It was one of only two examples of Spanish Mission architecture in the city. They never took the wrought-iron cross out of the tower. My mother sent me over to get some bricks. I wanted to drive down Superior Avenue with one of those bricks and say, ‘You know what, you SOB? You couldn’t take the bell and cross out of the tower! That’s a sacrilegious act!’ ”

  Polensek did not finish the metaphor of brick usage when we spoke in the fall of 2010. “Collinwood used to be a stand-alone village,” he continued. “It’s predominantly African American but we have a lot of Italians, Irish, and Lithuanians. Senator George Voinovich still lives in the neighborhood. We have a high concentration of city employees, working class, a great sense of pride. We presented documentation to the bishop on each parish. We started a campaign—letters, e-mails, elicting support from Baptist and Jewish leaders to say these are not just houses of worship, these are neighborhood institutions. If you close these it has an impact on stability. Because of pressure we were the only neighborhood not to have a closure.”33

  Father Bob Begin, who had helped Central American refugees in the 1980s, was pastor of St. Colman. Begin had been studying Arabic in hi
s off hours for several years, anticipating work with Iraqi refugees in America. He hoped for a sabbatical to further his study, but when the closure list came out, his parish was on it. Begin went to see the retired bishop Pilla.

  Did Pilla have friends in Rome?

  Rome will never reverse a bishop, Pilla told him. Solve the problem locally.

  Begin asked if Pilla knew Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the papal nuncio in Washington. “I do know Sambi and you should write him.” But, added Pilla, “you need to think of the church as your mother. You may not agree, but she’s your mother—you love her.”

  Archbishop Pietro Sambi made a good impression on embassy row in Washington. The nuncio had silver hair and deep forehead creases that lent dignity to his image after four decades as a diplomat. An Italian trained in canon law, he spoke English, French, and Spanish and had previously served as a nuncio in Indonesia, Cyprus, and Israel. He had worked with Cardinal O’Malley in arranging for Benedict to meet several Boston abuse survivors on his 2008 trip to America. Before that, Sambi had negotiated with Palestinian militants to free people in the siege of a Bethlehem basilica. Lennon’s Darwinist plan for Cleveland may have seemed small by comparison, but Sambi took Begin’s letter seriously. A priest who writes the papal delegate about his bishop knows the letter will go right back to the bishop, who can make his life hell.

  “I am deeply troubled,” began Begin. After the cluster groups’ many meetings, “the Bishop made decisions that completely disregarded our recommendations,” he wrote.

  The inner cities are places where you are most likely to find the very poor, the homeless and the near homeless … The neighborhoods are very fragile. The inner city parish then provides a lot more to the social fabric of the neighborhood than a place to worship. To be sure the great artistic miniature cathedrals that the various immigrant peoples have built at great sacrifice are a real oasis of beauty that the people truly appreciate.

  Each parish to some extent has developed and organized leadership in the community to provide safety, sustenance, emergency assistance, and programs for children, etc. When a Church closes, that component of society is removed with the landmark buildings and the already fragile social fabric rapidly disintegrates.

  The bishop was ignoring these factors, wrote Father Begin. (Meanwhile, several parishes had appeals in motion to the Congregation for the Clergy.) “For the inner city residents of Cleveland this is a grave scandal,” continued Father Begin to Archbishop Sambi, “a real abandonment not only of Church property of inestimable worth, but also as a real abandonment of truly needy people.”

  On the West Side of Cleveland, the recently arrived refugees from Somalia, Liberia, Congo, Sudan and other parts of Africa who have found a welcome in our Churches and a place at the table are devastated and confused by the news of closures. Many of them became Catholics in refugee camps because of Catholic Relief Services. Others are becoming Catholic because of the welcome they are given in our inner city parishes (the only place they can afford housing) …

  I have a forty-year history of working with the poor in the inner City of Cleveland and I myself am dismayed. It seems that in one or two years, the work of 40 years can be destroyed by the arbitrary action of Bishop Lennon.34

  Four thousand people filled out forms on the importance of the parish, which Begin sent to the bishop. “Lennon had no idea that 30 percent of people in this neighborhood do not have cars,” Begin told me later. “Every day at least fifty people come to our door in need of something. The phone rings all day. We need a full-time outreach worker. I explained this to him. If you’re from Boston and look at Cleveland, it’s kind of the way Cleveland looks at Alabama: you’re surprised if someone from Alabama has a good idea. At another meeting, he said if I was still interested in studying Arabic, ‘talk to your friend Sambi.’ Council members Jay Westbrook, Dona Brady, and Matt Zone showed him a map of the Lorain Avenue Corridor—four square miles without a church. State Senator Tom Patton talked with Lennon. He helped defeat a motion in our legislature to remove the statute of limitations on pedophilia—which Ohio bishops lobbied hard against, having seen California dioceses lose hundreds of millions in lawsuits after a 2002 state law opened the statutory filing window.”

  Lennon reversed his decision on St. Colman and St. Ignatius of Antioch, another inner-city parish. “I now have a more complete understanding of the extent of social and community services at the parish and the outreach of the diverse neighborhoods,” Lennon said in a May 1, 2009, letter, rescinding the two closure orders.35 “The reprieve comes with conditions,” wrote Tom Roberts of the National Catholic Reporter:

  Fr. Robert Begin has been placed on a four-year clock to end a trend of deficit spending and complete needed capital repairs; to continue growing “in households and in Mass attendance”; to strengthen parish finances and to establish “emergency reserves and build preservation reserves”; and to “remain dedicated to its outreach ministries while becoming a more financially viable parish.”36

  “Lennon is a hard man to figure out,” Begin told me, months later, as more priests contacted Sambi to complain about Lennon. “Lennon has a fixation about what he wants to do. He evidently read a book about franchise management. He makes his decisions as if parishes are franchises. If there’s enough room in one church to worship, why have more than one? A particular mission, ethnicity, none of those things mean anything if the customer base can be satisfied by one church.”

  BEATING THE DRUMS IN ROME

  Leaders from a large swath of parishes were enraged at the bishop when Peter Borré pulled into Cleveland for a June 27, 2009, meeting at the public library of Westlake, an inner-ring town. Had Cleveland controlled the water distribution to its near suburbs, as Columbus did, the city could have annexed dozens of townships like Westlake, amplifying the tax base to benefit the core. Instead, the diocese helped the mayor’s office with lifelines to the inner city. Forty people from Voice of the Faithful, FutureChurch, and the upstart Endangered Catholics came to the event. Eleven parishes had taken the path of canonical appeals, most of which would end up with Carlo Gullo as he framed the arguments, often in dialogue with Peter Borré, in pleadings to the Signatura. Lennon had shuttered parishes with pivotal neighborhood ministries in Akron and Lorain, too.

  Borré, comfortably tanned, wearing jeans and a red button-down shirt, began self-effacingly, “I know a talking head from out of town is not what you need.” He turned to the closures. “Lennon was the architect of what happened in Boston. Now you have him—”

  “How did you get rid of him?” asked a lady.

  “It took us two years,” he said, shaking his head. “A Boston auxiliary bishop told a group of priests, ‘This is a disaster we will never repeat.’ That is Lennon’s legacy. One cannot be cynical about losing one’s spiritual home.”

  Other bishops had been ruthless, too. Anthony and Noreen Foti of Scranton presented a numbing portrait of the suppressions under Bishop Joseph Martino. Two months later, the sixty-three-year-old Martino abruptly resigned after a six-year tenure “distinctive for an almost non-stop round of battles with Catholic academics, Catholic teachers’ union, Catholic politicians and a range of other groups, including his own peers among the Catholic hierarchy,” noted the National Catholic Reporter.37

  New Orleans archbishop Alfred Hughes had gotten Mayor Ray Nagin to order reluctant policemen into two vigil churches, one of them on the National Register of Historic Places, hauling several parishioners into patrol cars.

  In Boston, explained Borré, with eighty-three closures announced, the archdiocese stopped at sixty. “We mobilized nine vigils. The press thinks of vigils as people with candles. This is civil disobedience. After all of this in Cleveland, Lennon spared two parishes ‘on reflection.’

  “As I’ve gone around, I’ve been very clear that the chances of success are low. Then why do it?” He paused. “Even the Communists did not destroy churches in the Eastern bloc. They turned them into houses of the peopl
e which have slowly been returned to the church.”

  He mentioned Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, who in 2004, while yet in St. Louis, suppressed a Polish parish. St. Stanislaus Kostka had an 1891 charter under which the then-archbishop allowed a parish board to control their finances. The board in 2004 claimed its properties and assets totaled $8 million. Although the amount was never independently verified, Burke wanted to fold the parish into a common structure of nonprofit parish corporations in order to limit the assets available to sex abuse lawsuits. The parish council spurned Burke’s suppression order; unable to negotiate an agreement with him, they hired a Polish priest as pastor. Burke excommunicated the lay leaders and the pastor, Marek Bozek. The Vatican dismissed Bozek from the priesthood; he continued on as pastor. By 2010 Bozek’s support had splintered, with some parishioners joining the archdiocese in a civil lawsuit against the parish.38 Burke, ensconced in Rome, oversaw the Signatura cases as American parishes tried to reverse their bishops.39

  “We are concerned with keeping churches viable,” said Borré. He stressed the importance of filing appeals to keep the issue before the Vatican.

  People from the various groups voiced their frustrations, citing well-functioning parishes that stood to lose their funds (Cleveland suppressions netted about $9 million to the diocese the first year). A woman complained, “He is destroying the ethnic parishes.” Heads nodded across the room. Borré reviewed the history of O’Malley’s struggle and his 2004 letter “in which he said there are nights when I go to sleep and pray for the Lord to take me home. O’Malley stopped meeting with Lennon. You’re dealing with one of the most extreme personalities of the American bishops—Lennon stays in his own cocoon. He hates people standing outside, protesting. He hates that.”