The donation is surprising, both for its politics and its size. Advocates of legal weed often frame their cause as a social-justice issue, pointing to the harms of the U.S. drug war and the way low-level drug arrests disproportionately affect men of color. On many other issues, these progressive activists would likely find themselves aligned with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who leads Boston’s archdiocese. During his 13 years in the city, O’Malley has redirected many of the Church’s resources toward caring for the poor. He has led the development of policies around sex-abuse for the Church, and is part of Pope Francis’s inner circle; in 2013, the pontiff appointed him to a small council of advisers tasked with reforming Church governance.
The Church has long stood against drug legalization. Pope Francis has specifically argued that “attempts, however limited, to legalize so-called recreational drugs are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effect,” according to a Vatican diplomat. While early 20th-century American Catholics largely opposed a prohibition on alcohol, clergy have widely defended the ban on marijuana in recent years.
But there’s a big difference between opposing a ballot measure and flooding the opposition with cash—$850,000 is a huge chunk of money, especially for an archdiocese that has closed parishes, shuttered schools, and dismantled the palatial archbishops’ residence due to financial strain over the last decade and a half. Financially, things still aren’t great: The archdiocese lost $20.5 million in operating income between 2014 and 2015. And it has spent significant money on legal fees related to sex-abuse allegations in recent years—it came to new settlement agreements with seven alleged victims as recently as March.
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