The Priest Who Couldn't Be Bought (Not Part 2)

Well, I had thought to write the second part of The Priest Who Couldn’t Be Bought, the moving tale of a Polish priest, Wojciech Gil, who along with his fellow Pole and papal nuncio, Jozef Wesolowski, took on the drug lords of a narcotic-drenched Dominican Republic. They fought nails and teeth (strange how all the expressions get turned around in Spanish)—Gil increasing the number of altar boys from eight to 180—how dare you snigger out there! No shame!—and giving them money and cell phones and, oh, even trips to his native Poland. Wow—that’s a priest!

So in part 1, I had tidily gotten Wojciech Gil through his childhood, through the seminary (actually, that took about a sentence) and then to Santo Domingo and up the road to the little town of Juncalito, where he will spend the next eight years, and will be, by all accounts, well-received and loved by the residents.

There was just a little problem…

I spent yesterday afternoon watching YouTube clips about the case. There was the deacon, who spoke admiringly about the man, who described the house where Gil lived as being open to anyone, 24 / 7, where Gil was always prepared to listen, to make a good cup of coffee—Juncalito is in the prime coffee region of the Dominican Republic—and where….

But wait…

Because there was also, on several clips, the shocking photo of women’s panties and other accouterments not commonly associated with a priest’s wardrobe. Oh, and what about the reports that Gil could be found, with friends, completely sloshed—there was always vodka, his preferred tipple, whisky and gin in the house.

There was a clip of the collective luto, or grief of mourning, of the community. And then the clip of the fifteen year-old boy who had been abused for three years. And in addition to the gifts, there were the threats as well—there was a photo in the clip showing Wesolowski’s gun on his belt. Yup—the priest was packing.

So who was this guy? Had he been abused as a kid? What was going on in Poland, in those years when Wesolowski was growing up? Well, I knew that Gil was 38 or 39—a conscientious blogger would look that up—so he would have been born in the mid-70s. Which would have put him in his mid-teens by the time the Solidarity movement finally toppled the communist regime. What had that been like?

Then there was the interesting question—what was the power of the Catholic Church in those years? And what was the power of the church after democracy had been restored? I had a dim notion that the church ruled with a medieval hand—authoritarian and unchallenged. But was that true?

So it was time to zip over to Poland via the Internet and here’s what I found, on the first page of a Google search:

Paedophilia is caused by divorce, says Poland's top Catholic bishop as he blames parents for not bringing up children properly

•   Archbishop Jozef Michalik says child abusers are 'looking for love'

•   Claims divorce can be as harmful to children as paedophilia

•   Catholic church in Poland has been hit with paedophile priest allegations

Right—you know I had to read that one, so I did, and here’s Michalik’s tangy twist on orthodox thinking. These priests are not predators. The children, you see, come from broken homes—that’s the divorce part—and come seeking comfort and succor to a father figure—that’s the priest—and so things sometimes get out of hand. So it’s not all the priests’ fault: the children are partly to blame too—as well as those damned divorcing parents.

Well, to no one’s surprise, the archbishop came out the next day, and what he said was—hold on tightly to your seat, here—that he had been misinterpreted, his words twisted and indeed wrenched out of context. Of course he hadn’t meant that kids were responsible for the abuse, or were wantonly tempting those good men of the cloth on.

So that got me thinking. I’ve been to the Dominican Republic just once, but it was abundantly clear—it’s poor, but it is very, very Latin. The men are drinking beer and smoking and listening to bachata and trying to get into any girl’s pants, and the music is blasting everywhere, and the chickens are running around everywhere, and there is—paradoxically—a strange undercurrent of danger underneath all the seemingly loose and hot and casual enjoyment of life. The wrong look at the wrong girl? A gun will flash, blood on the floor, Mamita wailing as she grinds her face into the blood-soaked shirt of her son; she raises her head to scream at God, and her hands and face are smeared with her child’s blood.

Or this….

Pablito sees his chance, and takes the deal Julito has offered him—cut out the middle man, Carlitos. What does Carlitos do, anyway? It’s Pablito out there, making the deliveries, and everyone knows him, trusts him. And for a few weeks it’s fine, until Carlitos puts the screws on the otherrunners. And if Carlitos lets that pendejo, that bastard get away with that?! Replay Mamita on the floor, from the paragraph above.

Then there was the interesting question of the 41 or 42 year-old man who is claiming that he was sexually abused here in Puerto Rico. The archdiocese offered $25,000, the guy wanted a million bucks. So that made me think—um, fifteen years old?

Time for some political incorrectness. At age fifteen, your body is awash in testosterone—if you’re a boy—and you are thinking more or less constantly about sex. In fact, a good number of 15-year olds are having sex. And we are not living The Bells of St. Mary’s, or whatever that 1950’s film was.

At this point, a group of kids who were probably 15-years old passed me, each one of them talking loudly and profanely, wearing gangster clothes, addressing each other as cabrón—which if you don’t know what that is, good for you! So the priest abuses a six-year old? Cut his balls off. But I’m a little unsure about a 15-year old.

Especially in a Latin country, where—as Mr. Fernández insists—it is part of the cultural responsibility of the older brother to explain to the younger brother that:

 1.     all priests are gay
2.     don’t let any one of them touch you
3.     if he does, tell me, and I’ll beat the shit out of him

See?

Well, all of this had taken most of the afternoon, since I was also absolutely riveted by a clip of the archbishop of San Juan, who looked anguished and also, I felt, deeply culpable. In fact, guilty as sin. And where was the post of the day, the tidy conclusion to The Priest Who Couldn’t Be Bought?

Stay tuned, Dar Reader—but it may take a while.

You don’t write a novel in a day…..