Lalande remained apprehensive, however, telling Sullivan in February 1965 that he had communicated with a former CIA officer who reckoned that there was “a much higher than 5% chance that the recipients of funds from the CIA will become known.” Eventually, after lengthy consultations with his assistants, the Superior General decided to seek an audience with the Holy Father himself and, on July 9, 1965, met privately in the Vatican with Paul VI (John had died two years previously). In a report on the meeting to Sullivan, Lalande insisted that he had put both sides of the argument to the Pope, presenting Peyton’s viewpoint as well as his own, but a follow-up letter to Paul suggests otherwise. “The CIA is the ultra-secret spy organization of the United States,” the Holy Cross superior told the pontiff. “If the CIA has agreed to furnish money to the Rosary Crusade for its work in Latin America, it is surely not because of any religious motivation, but because it believes that the Crusade, in its work, is a way to promote the American policy of appeasing the popular masses.”
Although Peyton and Grace believed that the secret was safe “because of the ultra-secret character of the CIA,” Lalande continued, other well-placed Americans, such as Hesburgh, thought that exposure was quite
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likely. The Pope sided with Lalande, ruling that “the Family Rosary . . .
should absolutely not accept funds or help from the source you are acquainted with.” When Lalande remarked that Peyton would probably want to come to Rome to plead his case in person, Paul responded, “Please tell Father Peyton that it is the Holy Father who wants the question settled in this way and that the Holy Father has understood the problem very well.” He then added, “Tell Father Peyton that I shall say a special Hail Mary for him.”113
Despite this unequivocal backing from the Holy See, Lalande still did not find it easy to disentangle the Family Rosary from the CIA. In September he learned that, only a few days before his audience with the Pope, Peyton had accepted an offer of $200,000 for follow-up work in Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela, and a new crusade in Ecuador. As Sullivan pointed out, it would be impossible to find replacement support for these ventures at such short notice, and hard to explain their sudden cancellation, so Lalande reluctantly authorized the money’s expenditure, on the understanding that this was the final time he would do so.114 The Vatican, meanwhile, was breathing down the Superior General’s neck, demanding a full accounting of the monies the Family Rosary had received from Grace for its South American mission and instructing him to keep a close eye on Peyton.115 Apart from the potentially disastrous consequences of the CIA subsidies becoming public knowledge, high-placed officials in Rome, such as Secretary of State Amleto Cardinal Cicognani, were concerned about the Crusade’s identification with right-wing regimes in Brazil and Spain, as well as about its lack of “pastoral or theological foundation.” This last complaint was echoed in Lalande’s demand, also reflecting the influence of Vatican II, that the Family Rosary embark on a “renewal in its methods and its work in a post-conciliar Church.”116
Neither Peyton nor his secretive patrons in the CIA were squelched so easily. Throughout the fall of 1965, Lalande received intimations that, despite the Vatican’s injunction, “the company which has given him assistance . . . might consider that there are ways of ‘getting around’ the prohibition.”117 On December 20 the exasperated Holy Cross Superior General (by all accounts, usually a cheerful and even-tempered man) instructed Sullivan to make it clear to Peyton that “if he does not carry out the wish of the Holy See,” he, Lalande, would recall all “religious engaged in the apostolate of the Crusade” and “acquaint the bishops of South America with the situation of the Family Rosary Crusade.”118
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