Free Render Unto Rome by Jason Berry

dinners. The reality is, if you’re betraying people on one level, you’re betraying them on another. In Boston the retirement program has gone belly-up.”
    Where did the money go?
    Teague shrugged. “Law divided the clergy pension fund for payouts on the abuse costs before the scandal broke in 2002.”
    Teague’s conjecture matched what many other people believed, thoughthe release of new financial documents put more riddles over an easy answer.
    THE NEWS FROM ROME
    “The Globe made repeated efforts in Rome to get an explanation of the appeals process from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy,” Michael Paulson reported in early May 2005.
An undersecretary at the office at first denied that the agency was involved with the parish closings; after the Globe pointed out that the agency’s secretary had signed letters to many of the closed parishes, the undersecretary referred calls to the secretary, who then referred calls to the prefect, Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos. The cardinal did not respond to repeated requests for an interview made both by phone and in writing. 18
    But in August, the Congregation for the Clergy ruled that the Boston archdiocese had erred in its canonical claim to the assets of eight parishes it had suppressed. Borré was delighted. “Within this archdiocese,” he told the Globe , in a jab at Lennon, the self-taught canonist, “they are improvising in the area of canon law, and they are doing as poor a job under canon law as they have done under Reconfiguration.” But under the Vatican’s royalist system of justice, even as Clergy ruled against Boston’s suppression, Cardinal Castrillón’s staff was helping O’Malley confect a way for pastors to voluntarily turn over parish funds to the archdiocese, putting everyone in compliance with canon law to ensure that the chancery got what it needed. O’Malley told Paulson of the Globe , “We’re glad that the Holy See seems to be supporting our situation and needs and is trying to suggest to us ways that we can achieve those needs.” 19
    “Supporting our situation” was a genteel way to describe a tribunal system that swung behind a bishop to help him overcome its own decision against his property seizure. As those negotiations cleared a path of sorts for the plan to proceed, its author Bishop Lennon was feeling pressure from David Castaldi, chair of the Parish Reconfiguration Fund Oversight Committee. In choosing Castaldi for that task, Seán O’Malley had turned to a reformer with loyalist trappings. Castaldi was a member of Voiceof the Faithful, the lay group many bishops loathed, but he had a long background with the church.
    Raised in small-town Indiana and a graduate of Notre Dame and Harvard Business School, Castaldi had founded, directed, and sold two biotechnology companies. He was “comfortably secure” when a priest in late 2000 suggested he interview for the job of chancellor of the archdiocese. Slender and bespectacled, Castaldi, then in his early sixties, had never met a bishop. Law impressed him; he took the job at a salary well below what he could have commanded: a way of giving back. He lasted eleven months. “Dave, this just wasn’t a good fit,” Law said in parting.
    A decade later, sitting in the airy lounge of a Beacon Street hotel, Castaldi spoke in measured tones. “It wasn’t a good fit, I suppose. I tried to be diplomatic but I offended people. For the cardinal’s residence, I insisted that petty cash follow good procedures; the nuns were used to no procedures. I wanted documentation and receipts as a basis for replenishing petty cash. They didn’t like that at all.” Castaldi evinced a wry smile and took a sip of Diet Coke. “We needed more space in the chancery. Good operating practices suggested that we use that scarce resource more wisely. You had to make decisions, but you’re in a clerical culture. I wanted a priest to have a smaller office. He insisted he needed a larger office. His