Blessed to Receive?

High-powered postal pitches for contributions are no new thing to American religion, but the Pallottine Fathers can claim a unique precedent. The 19th century Italian founder of their 2,140-member order, St. Vincent Pallotti, wrote countless letters to solicit contributions from benefactors throughout Europe for his work among the poor. Still, some U.S. Pallottines seem to have exceeded by far their founder's epistolary zeal. Since November 1972, records at the Baltimore Post Office show, the order's fund-raising operation in that city has spent nearly $5 million on postage alone to mail to would-be contributors around the country a variety of elaborate baits, including a "Free Pallottine Sweepstakes," featuring prizes such as automobiles and pool tables.

$54,000 Loan. Now the eastern U.S. province of the Pallottines that is responsible for the fund-raising operation is under intense scrutiny for financial wheeling and dealing that seems to be less than compatible with the order's apostolic mission. The trouble began last month when it became known that a $54,000 loan from the Pallottines to their real estate adviser, C. Dennis Webster, may have helped pay for Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel's 1974 divorce settlement. Webster had lent exactly that amount to Mandel shortly before receiving the Pallottine loan.

The Webster connection does not end there. In 1974, the Pallottines invested $280,000 in Amalgamated Modular Structures, Inc., a portable classroom manufacturer headed by C. Dennis Webster that is involved in a Maryland school-construction scandal.

As a religious order, the Pallottines are exempt from laws requiring financial disclosures, and thus outsiders can only guess what their mailings have brought in. The Baltimore Sun cited estimates that the pitches may have yielded between $8 and $15 million last year alone; the order sent little more than $400,000 to the Pallottine missions in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Pallottine headquarters in Rome dismisses the estimates as gross exaggerations, and in the U.S. the superior of the embattled province announced last week that there will be an outside audit of the operation. Even so, the ambitious fundraisers seem to have produced more ugly smoke than spiritual fire.

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