American missionaries from such Catholic societies as Maryknoll and the Jesuits traveled south with the twin aims of containing communism and promoting development—and they willingly collaborated with intelligence officers in local CIA stations. The best personification of this alli-
C AT H O L I C S
187
ance was Belgian Jesuit Roger Vekemans, a former resistance fighter and liberal anticommunist who accepted covert CIA subsidies via the New York–based International Development Foundation to finance various social reform programs in Chile.83
Although it lacked the liberal aspect of much postwar Catholic missionary work in South America—indeed, its social implications were distinctly conservative—Patrick Peyton’s Family Rosary Crusade fit the CIA’s bill in several important respects. The intense piety it aroused in working-class Catholics was an extremely effective antidote against the contagion of communism. Peyton himself was deeply conscious of the political dimension of his mission, proudly proclaiming in a 1946 radio broadcast, “The rosary is the offensive weapon that will destroy Communism—the great evil that seeks to destroy the faith.” Above all, the Crusade was very well planned and executed. It used a “proven technique of infiltration, employing indigenous organizations, communications, and peoples to penetrate Communist strongholds in depth . . . with a weapon Communists cannot fight on equal ground,” noted a confidential 1962 report entitled “United States Security and the Power of Prayer.” The same report concluded, “There is no other organization available which can mobilize local forces in Latin America on such a mass basis to accomplish these objectives.”84
Peyton’s anticommunist credentials notwithstanding, he might well never have featured in the CIA’s plans for South America had it not been for the offices of a figure who came to perform a role in his life similar to that played in Tom Dooley’s by Edward Lansdale. J. Peter Grace was president of a multimillion-dollar international corporation created by his great-grandfather, W. R. Grace, with interests in transport, sugar, and mining in South America. A hard-driven man, he always wore two watches, one showing the local time of wherever he happened to be, the other the hour back at his New York headquarters. He also carried a pistol tucked into his belt, which he would casually display “when showing off a thirty-four-inch waist—one of his many vanities.”85 A fierce believer in free enterprise and the “American way,” Grace was an officer in a number of CIA front organizations, including AMCOMLIB, Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc., and—perhaps not surprisingly, given his company’s stake in various South American industries—the American Institute of Free Labor Development. Grace was also a devout Catholic who wielded
188
S A V I N G T H E W O R L D
immense power within the American church through his position as president of the eastern chapter of the U.S. Knights of Malta (other members of this secretive chivalric order included two Directors of Central Intelligence, William Casey and John A. McCone).86 His self-image as a kind of religious knight or protector of the faith appears to have earned him equal measures of gratitude and suspicion from the Catholic hierarchy.
Grace and Peyton first met on board ship in 1946 when the latter was returning to Ireland after his ordination, and the two immediately became ardent mutual devotees. The businessman was not only struck by the priest’s holiness, he also quickly grasped the potency of his message as a defense against the various forces threatening the American way of life.87
As well as soliciting donations from business acquaintances, Grace set up permanent financial structures for Crusade operations and arranged loans to Peyton of thousands of dollars (none of which was ever repaid) through his family’s New York bank. For his part, Peyton was greatly relieved to be released from the temporal concerns of his mission and placed his trust in his lay champion entirely. “Of all men in the entire world Peter is the one, and the only one to whom we can look for the financial protection, defense, and security of the Crusade,” he told a fellow religious.88 Hence, in 1958, when Peyton resolved to take his crusade south of the border, it was no surprise that he should have sought assistance from Grace, who, equally predictably, “pledged that he would spare no effort in order to get financial help for us to cover Latin America” (as the priest told his superiors).89
Grace was as good as his word. In July 1958, he wrote his friend John Moore, chairman of the influential Business Advisory Council, asking