“how we can get a movement similar to that described by Father Peyton financed—whether it be through the CIA, through Franco, or through some foundation.”90 Several months later, in mid-November, the two men approached Allen Dulles, who requested a formal, written project proposal from Grace. The businessman duly sent the Director of Central Intelligence a twelve-page letter on November 24 summarizing the rosary priest’s achievements to date, pointing out the political potential of his message in South America, and estimating the Crusade’s financial requirements at $500,000.
When one considers, Mr. Dulles, that this priest came here from Ireland at age nineteen and went to Hollywood in 1945 with nothing but his
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faith and a dedicated will to win the world to family prayer and unity, with no previous experience or education in the entertainment field, I think it is pretty clear that when one gets behind this man, one is backing a proven winner.91
Dulles was favorably impressed and in early December summoned Grace to Washington, where they met in the White House office of Richard Nixon. The Vice President, who earlier in the year had hosted a meeting between Grace and other U.S. business giants with South American interests (among them David Rockefeller and Juan T. Trippe of Pan American Airways), was similarly taken with the proposal, exclaiming about Peyton, “Bring him by the office—must be fantastic.”92 Further meetings at Grace’s home in Manhasset, New York, took place early in 1959, leading to the project’s approval “on a pilot basis” and a payment of $20,000
in seed money.93 Dulles’s main proviso, that the money not be passed through “an individual or ostensibly a church organization” but rather via
“a front organization,” appears to have been satisfied by Grace’s proposal that an entity called The Crusade for Family Prayer, incorporated in New York in 1954, act as the “intermediate group.”94 This measure was intended, presumably, to circumvent “our traditional and sound doctrine of separation of Church and state,” which even Grace admitted was a problem.95 Peyton, who had been kept informed of the negotiations’ progress, was delighted by this outcome, hastening to tell his Holy Cross superiors
“that if this proving goes through there will be more help forthcoming . . .
to advance the wishes and will and person of Our Blessed Mother.”96
Peyton did not have to wait long for “this proving.” The pilot crusade, which took place in the Chilean town of La Serena (the CIA’s choice—
Peyton had originally favored Bolivia as his point of entry into South America), was considered so successful that in late April 1960, at a meeting with Grace and “another great friend of the Family Rosary Crusade” at Washington’s Carlton hotel, the priest learned that he would be granted
“five times what we received for entrance into Chile, for the entrance into another Latin American country.”97 The next target was soon revealed as Caracas, Venezuela, a city described by Peyton as “ready for revolution, very restless and disturbed.”98 Supported by U.S. Steel executive Walter Donnelly (who had attended Nixon’s 1958 summit on South America), the Crusade delivered “a tremendous blow to the Communists and the Castroites,” overcoming such acts of sabotage as the defacement of posters
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and even bomb threats to draw a crowd of 600,000 to the final rally on July 16.99 After Caracas, it was off to Colombia, where a rally held in Bogotá in March 1962 was attended by some 1 million worshippers.100