God and Mammon in Chicago

By Alexander L. Taylor III

Cardinal Cody's finances are under investigation

John Cardinal Cody, 73, has aroused passionate reactions ever since he was appointed Archbishop of Chicago in 1965. His detractors found him cold, arrogant and aloof, given to acting arbitrarily without consulting lower church officials. His supporters praised his generally strong record on civil rights and his relatively efficient administration of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese (2.4 million members).

But friends and foes alike were shocked by allegations last week that Cody diverted up to $1 million in tax-free church funds to enrich a longtime friend, Helen Dolan Wilson, 74. The Chicago Sun-Times, which had been investigating Cody's financial affairs for 18 months, splashed its findings across six pages. The newspaper reported, accurately, that a U.S. grand jury is investigating the charges. It is the first time that a church official of Cody's rank has ever been the subject of a federal investigation. "This is the biggest thing since the Chicago fire," said a local lawyer. Cody promised to respond "when all of the allegations, false and otherwise, have been made and clarified." He added: "When one is falsely accused, one wonders what is the reason."

No one around Cody was denying that he and Wilson have been close friends for decades. The two grew up together in the same Irish Catholic neighborhood in St. Louis. Wilson's father married Cody's aunt in 1913, and they have described themselves as "cousins." Cody had helped Wilson obtain a clerical job in the St. Louis Archdiocese that she held for 25 years. She was a prominent guest at religious ceremonies in which Cody participated. She accompanied him to Rome for his 1967 induction into the College of Cardinals.

According to the Sun-Times, Wilson has been able to accumulate a personal fortune of $1 million despite her small salary and modest family circumstances. She was awarded only $50 a month in child support and $1 a month in alimony when she divorced her husband in 1939. Her work at the St. Louis Archdiocese, though secure, paid little, and her pension is less than $1,500 a year. Yet Wilson allegedly indulged a taste for furs and designer clothes and held an expensive country-club membership. In 1970 she built a $100,000 home in Boca Raton, Fla., since sold. The Cardinal is said to have paid Wilson a secret church salary of up to $11,500 during a six-year period from 1969 to 1975 when she leased and furnished a luxury apartment on Chicago's Gold Coast. She now divides her time between a $61,000 condominium in Boca Raton and a $500-a-month apartment in St. Louis. Informed of the newspaper's charges against her last week, Wilson called them "a vicious joke."

While Wilson was amassing her wealth, the Sun-Times said, Cody controlled two church accounts containing more than $1 million. The money was supposed to be used for donations to bishops and priests for official visits to Chicago and to pay his household expenses. The accounts were never audited by the church because they were intended for use at Cody's discretion. Cody is reported by the Sun-Times to have told associates that he paid for the Boca Raton home out of personal funds saved up over the years.

Cody himself lives unostentatiously. Though his friendship with Wilson is common knowledge in ecclesiastical circles, Cody told a Chicago columnist in 1973: "I simply don't have the time to have what you'd call a best friend or a close friend . . . In my position as a religious leader, there is no need for any best friends. Everyone is my friend."

Eugene Kennedy, a Loyola University psychologist and former Chicago priest, describes Cody as "an old-fashioned prelate who had teethed on a ring of ambition. He climbed to the top of the largest Catholic diocese in the country just as its foundations began to swell and crack from the pressure of change." Cody went to Chicago from New Orleans, where he was known as a liberal archbishop for boldly integrating its parochial schools. But his reputation soured in the 1970s, especially when he closed four inner-city Chicago schools for economy reasons at the same time he spent $4 million for an elaborate closed-circuit church television network. He has resisted a Vatican encouraged trend to give priests and parishioners more say in diocesan affairs.

The archdiocese, meanwhile, has been conducting a vigorous attack against the Sun-Times ever since it learned of the paper's interest in Cody's finances. Through its own publication, the Chicago Catholic, the archdiocese accused the Sun-Times of harassment and intimidation. In denying the charges against Cody last week, church leaders pointedly noted that the newspaper had editorially opposed the U.S. Catholic hierarchy's position against abortion and in favor of government aid to parochial schools.

In Chicago, where scandals involving major figures are hardly uncommon, the case against Cody is already being called, half jokingly, Godscam. But Cody is a sick man with a bad heart that requires nearly constant medical attention. He is less than two years from the church's customary retirement age of 75 for bishops. The Vatican has so far refused to comment on the charges against Cody, though some church sources in Rome believe he has been the subject of an unfair campaign of vilification. Even if Cody is indicted, which would probably lead to his resignation as archbishop, it would be unusual if he lost the title of Cardinal, which is a personal honor, bestowed by the Pope, and almost never revoked.

At week's end journalists were looking into other archdiocesan finances, including the purchase of insurance and pension plans through a St. Louis broker named David Wilson, who is Helen's son. Cody's supporters, and even many of his enemies, were hoping that the charges against him were groundless and that the aging prelate would eventually be allowed to leave his post--not as he had held it, but quietly.--By Alexander L. Taylor III. Reported by J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago

With reporting by J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago

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