TRANSLATOR’SNOTE.docVIP

Ste Jeanne d’Arc Responsiones Reply Brief By Advocate Carlo Gullo January 16, 2008 TRANSLATION BY THE COUNCIL OF PARISHES TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: This has been translated from the brief submitted in Latin, by Advocate Carlo Gullo on behalf of the parishioners of Ste Jeanne d’Arc, Lowell, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, on January 16, 2008. This is Advocate Gullo’s response to briefs by the Signatura’s Promoter of Justice Rev. Daneels, and by the Public Administration Advocate Marthe Wegan, representing the Congregation for the Clergy and the RCAB. The items in square brackets below are translator’s comments or clarifications; all other notations such as items in round brackets and bolding, are from Advocate Gullo’s brief. Translation follows: Most Eminent Prefect [the president of the Apostolic Signatura court, Cardinal Agostino Vallini] Having read the brief of the Public Administration [Advocate Marthe Wegan] dated November 21, 2006, presented also with the opinion of the Most Reverend and principal Promoter of Justice on January 3 [no year given, but it is 2008], the undersigned advocate for the appellants [parishioners] responds: [Gullo quotes from Advocate Marthe Wegan’s brief] 1. “In this truly special and very painful case, maximum discretion was given to His Excellency the Archbishop of Boston so that he might save the entire archdiocese from monetary ruin, provoked not only, but also by the ‘sexual abuse crisis’ [sic, in English]. It is in this context that all actions of this process of reconfiguration and ‘closing of parishes’ [sic, in English] are to be understood, not excluding the suppression of wealthy parishes, not excluding the suppression of parishes of maximum vitality, not excluding the giving of goods of extinct parishes to the archdiocese itself! ... This giving … has been carried out willingly and correctly by the pastors on both sides in the scope of the ‘reconfiguration’ process” (Br