The San Francisco Chronicle is running a three-part series on the closure of St. Brigid parish downtown, a process that was initiated more than a decade ago, and fought by parishioners who questioned the Archdiocese’s reasoning for closing their parish.
Two days later, Bryan went to the home office of the Vatican attorney whom the committee had hired. While the attorney worked in the next room, Bryan sat on a sofa in the tidy, book-filled den and went through files.
Seeing some of the documents for the first time, Bryan couldn’t believe any court of law could operate this way. Flipping through files, he came across a manila folder. When he opened it, his eyes widened. There was a letter on Vatican stationery.
Two years earlier, the letter revealed, the Vatican had granted a last-minute appeal to keep St. Brigid open. Bryan was stunned. The committee’s motion for a stay had been approved — St. Brigid had been thrown a possible lifeline — but word never got back to San Francisco.
The 15-day stay, according to the letter from a prefect at the Congregation for the Clergy, was granted just two days before the doors of St. Brigid were shut.
Bryan wondered why no one was told.
He soon found his answer. In the folder was a letter from Archbishop Quinn, written June 28, 1994, the same day that the Congregation told the archbishop of the reprieve.
In his letter, Quinn asked the Congregation to withdraw its stay immediately. "Once your decision becomes public that I am to delay the closing of St. Brigid’s," the archbishop wrote, "Bryan will assume a new importance. The decision will appear to legitimize him and his tactics."
Quinn wrote that a stay would also give the impression that "Rome favors the wealthy parish and has been intimidated by Robert Bryan and by the volume of protests received in Rome."
The archbishop’s letter referred to Bryan as a "demagogue who deals in falsehoods and half-truths" and said "he has been a Catholic only since April."
Part 3 has yet to be posted.
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