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anticommunist Pope Pius XII and election of the reforming John XXIII opened a new era of dialogue between Catholics and communists. John’s first major encyclical, Mater et Magistra, in July 1961, even proposed that it was colonialism, not communism, that was the main cause of Third World problems.108 Meanwhile, the Second Vatican Council, which met in four sessions between 1962 and 1965, wrought a profound transformation in Catholic doctrine and observance, downgrading rote catechisms and ritualistic devotion in favor of an emphasis on the immanence of God and the church as a community of equals. Combined with local factors (among them the influence of liberal evangelists from the United States), these developments changed many South American clerics from defenders of the established order into advocates of the oppressed—and leading critics of the wave of militarism then appearing to engulf the continent.

This religious movement, later known as “liberation theology,” was especially strong in Brazil, where Catholic prelates such as Dom Hélder Câmara proclaimed the “Church of the Poor.”109 Although Peyton attempted to revise his ministry of family prayer in line with Vatican II, his theological conservatism and unquestioning anticommunism set him at odds with the spirit of the postconciliar hierarchy. His religious superiors, already peeved by his assertiveness, were therefore dismayed by the reports linking him to the Branco coup. Noting that some Brazilian bishops reckoned the new regime “extremely reactionary and conservative,” the Superior General, Germain-Marie Lalande, instructed Peyton’s Provincial Superior, Richard H. Sullivan, to tell the rosary priest and his associates to make sure “that nothing in their work is interpreted as smacking of politics.” Sullivan thought that this “would be the last thing that Father Peyton would grant,” but agreed that it should be “the goal for the Crusade that he avoid the possibility that politics use him.”110

Lalande’s misgivings about Peyton increased suddenly in October 1964

when he found out about the Crusade’s secret financing by the CIA. His informer was Theodore Hesburgh, who had himself learned of the arrangement directly from the chairman of Notre Dame’s board of trustees, Peter Grace. “I cannot alter my opinion that this situation is extremely dangerous,” Hesburgh wrote Lalande, clearly in some dismay. “This is not to deny the good work that has been done by the Family Rosary, but I believe that all of the good would be destroyed, as well as many other innocent works, if the facts of this matter ever came to light. I am also

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reasonably sure that many of the American hierarchy would be horrified at the thought.”111 Evidently of the same mind, Lalande immediately called Peyton to the Holy Cross Generalate in Rome, where the two met, along with Assistant General Bernard Mullahy, on October 24. Apparently undaunted, the rosary priest related the history of his relationship with Peter Grace, emphasizing the businessman’s religiosity and devotion to the Family Rosary. He then launched into a spirited defense of the secret subsidies, pointing out that other groups and individuals also received such payments (among those mentioned by name were Maryknoll, Vekemans, and Billy Graham), predicting dire consequences for both the Crusade and its U.S. base, the Holy Cross’s eastern province, if the funding were terminated, and claiming that the chances of being found out were extremely slim, probably in the region of 5 percent. Lalande, however, was unswayed, commanding “that the Crusade slowly become free of this source of revenue and that it only undertake the work that is possible from other sources . . . that are more normal.” The meeting ended with an agreement that, while Peyton could continue to accept support from the CIA for the moment, he “must break away when it is provided from another source.”112