Bye-bye, Bishop

Part 3

by Jody Ericson

Family friends say Gelineau always wanted to be a priest. Growing up in Burlington's quaint North End, Gelineau would trail his two older cousins, Edward and Wilfred -- both priests -- at all family functions.

The Reverend Raymond Giroux, a family friend from Vermont, says, "You knew Gelineau was going to be a priest. It was a foregone conclusion."

According to Giroux, Gelineau, as a teenager, was the "master of ceremonies," or senior altar boy, who helped with special Mass ceremonies at St. Joseph's Church. In his junior year of high school, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, Connecticut, leaving behind Vermont and his sheltered working-class neighborhood.

Millie Bove was raised in the same house on Lafountain Street as Gelineau, who lived on the first floor with his parents and two brothers. Bove, 82, is nearly blind now, but she still crochets, as her husband watches Mass on TV in another room.

When Bove talks about the Gelineaus, her face crinkles with delight. Gelineau's father, Leon, sold insurance, she says, while his uncle, Ed and Wilfred's father, ran a bakery on North Street across from the neighborhood elementary school. Bove recalls how, at the end of each day, the students would swarm the place for day-old glazed donuts, a penny apiece.

Gelineau's mother, Juliette, "was a wonderful woman" and a meticulous housekeeper, Bove recalls. She participated in the typical activities of Catholic women of her day -- the mothers' club at her sons' school, the St. Ann Society -- but her primary focus was her youngest son, Norman, who was retarded. Later, her caregiving would extend to her husband. (She finally sent him to live in a nursing home after he suffered a series of strokes.)

While Norman, a jazz buff, played the drums in his parents' basement, his brother Robert followed his father into the insurance business. Young Louis, meanwhile, was on his way to becoming a priest, first at St. Thomas Seminary, then at St. Michael's in Winooski, Vermont, where he majored in Latin. From 1948 to 1954 he attended St. Paul Seminary at the University of Ottawa, Canada, where he studied philosophy and theology. After he was ordained, Gelineau served in two rural parishes in Vermont before being handpicked by the bishop to attend Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC. Two years after returning to Burlington with his licentiate in canon law (a degree falling somewhere between a bachelor's and doctorate), he was named assistant chancellor. By 1963, he had worked his way up to vicar general.

When the Pope named Gelineau bishop of Providence, in December 1971, all of Burlington rejoiced. Unfortunately, Gelineau's family couldn't tell whether father Leon truly comprehended the news, given his debilitated state.

In the coming years, Louis Gelineau would leave his mark on Rhode Island in bold ways. His warm and magnetic personality enabled him to become an extraordinary fundraiser for the diocese. Last year his "Vision of Hope" capital campaign, for instance, raised $49 million in gifts and pledges. According to Dale O'Leary, the bishop traveled from parish to parish asking for donations. "Bishop Gelineau got this community together," she says.

Willing to use his religious influence in the political arena, Gelineau became a powerful force in the most Catholic state in the nation, playing a key role in the 1980s defeat of such legislation as a gay-civil-rights amendment in Providence. (The amendment passed in 1994, after he withdrew his opposition.) A staunch opponent of abortion, he was one of the first bishops in the country to participate in the annual March for Life on Washington. "And we still go out to [Planned Parenthood in Providence] and say the rosary," says O'Leary. "That's a sign that he's there with the people on the frontlines."

The bishop also weighed in on the assisted-suicide debate in Rhode Island. In a rare move, he sent a letter in May to legislators, urging them to approve a ban. Later, he lobbied Governor Lincoln Almond to sign the bill into law.

To further his political agenda, Gelineau often uses the Providence Visitor, a diocesan newspaper with some 45,000 readers, as his mouthpiece. The paper regularly endorses state and federal candidates and attacks pro-choice pols, such as US Congressman Patrick Kennedy and Senator Jack Reed. Gelineau also has his own cable-television series, Rejoice in Hope, and a diocesan Web page and radio program at his disposal.

In 1986, in perhaps his most controversial act as bishop, Gelineau ruled that Mary Ann Sorrentino was automatically excommunicated from the Church by virtue of her job as executive director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island. Angry and deeply wounded, Sorrentino made appearances on Donahue and was interviewed by several national newspapers. (She now hosts a radio talk show.) The negative publicity alienated the state's more liberal Catholics by casting the diocese in a hard, cold light.

The bishop's regard for human life, however, apparently goes only so far. Although Gelineau regards abortion as murder, he has toned down his opposition to the death penalty. Two years ago, he told legislators they were "free to vote their conscience" on a bill that would have reinstated capital punishment in Rhode Island. The bill was later defeated, but the message was clear.

"The edge of the prophetic voice of the Church has been dulled," Arlene Violet, a radio talk-show host who is also a former nun and a former attorney general, told the Phoenix at the time.

In April 1986, Gelineau had a personal crisis of his own when rumors circulated throughout the state that he had been arrested. The rumors were never proven true, but they were so rampant that the bishop made a special appearance on Channel 10 to deny them. Asked whether he had ever been placed in custody or questioned by police, Gelineau said, "Never, never, never." As for the source of the rumors, he speculated, "There might be a network of people who would like to hurt me."

No one in the media released any more details or even provided hints about where they had gotten their information. The next day, Providence Journal-Bulletin religion reporter Richard Dujardin went so far as to write a story about how such rumors get started.

In November 1986, Dujardin wrote another story about Gelineau, a flattering profile in the Providence Sunday Journal. He concluded that the worst was behind the bishop and that Gelineau was undergoing a "personal resurrection" of sorts.

But 10 years later, another crisis would hit. In complaints filed in state and federal courts, Gelineau was accused of aiding and abetting child-molesting priests. Those suing the bishop say that if Gelineau is not held accountable and is allowed to retire honorably before these cases come to trial, the situation will not change.

But O'Leary disagrees. Bishop Gelineau, she says, has done enough penance. "Because he is the bishop, he is called to a far higher standard. So when he fails, he hurts all the more," she says. "I don't care what anyone says. I'm very proud of our bishop. I've seen him truly suffer and grow. And, after all, isn't this the essence of Catholic spirituality?"

Part 4

Jody Ericson is a staff writer for the Providence Phoenix; she can be reached at jericson[a]phx.com.