Charities: A Will & Two Ways

The southern tip of Texas is a desolate land—flat, sandy, baked the year round by a relentless sun. Ranches here are measured in thousands of acres, and some of the sprawling estates rest on an unexplored ocean of oil. It is over one such pool of wealth that two rival groups of Roman Catholics have been waging a bitter battle of words and wits that echoes all the way to the Vatican.

At stake is the fortune—which may prove to be worth as much as $300 million—left by the late Sarita Kenedy East. She was a granddaughter of Captain Mifflin Kenedy, who was co-founder of the famed King Ranch and later became sole owner of the neighboring La Parra Ranch—an empire of 400,000 acres and 25,000 head of cattle. Sarita was an aloof and eccentric widow who liked her whisky and was more at ease with her Mexican ranch hands than with her wealthy landowning neighbors.

A Roman Catholic with strong charitable instincts, she changed her will in January 1960 leaving the bulk of her estate—a half-share of La Parra that includes rights to most of its untapped gas and oil—to a private charitable foundation. Codicils later named the Most Rev. Mariano Garriga, Roman Catholic Bishop of Corpus Christi, one of Sarita’s cousins, and her lawyer as foundation members.

New Monasteries. They did not stay members long. She was paid a visit by a Trappist monk called Brother Leo (Christopher Gregory) of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Mass. Brother Leo, whom she had known before, was apparently doing some fund raising on behalf of two fledgling Trappist monasteries that St. Joseph’s was establishing in South America. Sarita took a liking to the personable monk, who received permission from his abbot to stay with her while she completed arrangements for disposing of her estate. She even gave power of attorney to Brother Leo, who took her off to the sites of the new monasteries in Chile and Argentina.

In June 1960, to the surprise of her Texas friends, Sarita dropped the three members of the foundation, substituted Brother Leo and two prominent Catholics from the East Coast: Millionaire Layman J. Peter Grace, president of W. R. Grace & Co., and the Rev. Patrick Peyton, C.S.C., head of a prayer-crusading organization called Family Rosary, Inc. Eight months later Sarita died of cancer in a Manhattan hospital; Brother Leo, her constant companion during her last days, was at her bedside.

Vatican Intervention. Sarita’s death created a legal battle that eventually forced the Vatican to intervene. Bishop Garriga sued to regain his old position as a member of the foundation. Sarita’s cousin also sued for reinstatement, and got an injunction preventing Brother Leo, Grace and associates from touching any of the estate’s funds. In addition, he demanded an accounting of $1,000,000 that Brother Leo had withdrawn from Texas banks, apparently to finance the South American monasteries.

To complicate matters still more, 43 of Sarita’s relatives sued to set aside the entire will, charging that Brother Leo had exercised a Svengali-like influence over a sick old woman of unsound mind. Eventually, Rome’s Consistorial Congregation sent Archbishop John Krol of Philadelphia down to Texas to find out what was going on.

Separate Foundations. Last week the principal parties to the dispute seemed to be on the verge of an out-of-court settlement that would in effect create two separate foundations. About 80% of the estate, including Sarita’s interest in La Parra and half the future oil royalties, would be administered by Bishop Garriga, the rest by the Eastern Catholics. By the time they settle, the claimants will have more money than they bargained for: since Sarita’s death, oil royalties have increased the value of the estate by $2,000,000. As for Brother Leo, he presumably would have little to say about where the income from any foundation went now. He has been assigned to Our Lady of the Andes, the new monastery in Chile that was built with the help of Sarita’s funds. His job there: herding cattle.