Liebreich, Karen

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Liebreich, Karen

PERSONAL: Female. Education: Cambridge University, Ph.D.; European University Institute, research diploma.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, 4th Fl., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, historian, television producer, and entrepreneur. British Broadcasting Corporation, and History Channel, producer and documentary researcher. French Institute, London, England, cultural assistant.

WRITINGS:

Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Karen Liebreich is a writer, historian, and documentary producer. Educated at Cambridge University, she has researched and produced television documentaries for the British Broadcasting Corporation as well as the History Channel. Liebreich has also been a successful entrepreneur who created and then sold her own business. In her book Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio Liebreich carefully documents a sexual-abuse scandal that occurred more than 350 years ago within the Catholic Church. Though the story is centuries old, it prefigures the sex scandals riddling Catholic clergy in North America beginning in the late twentieth century.

The Piarist Order of Priests was founded in 1622 by Spanish priest José de Calasanz. It was a strict and austere order; as part of their holy observance, the Piarists deliberately inflicted discomfort upon themselves by such means as wearing sandals in the winter and depriving themselves of food. The order's mission was to provide free education to impoverished boys throughout Europe, teaching them practical matters and useful job skills such as writing and the type of mercantile arithmetic commonly used by merchants and businessmen. The Piarist system was enormously successful, and the order's popular schools proliferated rapidly. In fact, there were some forty schools in place by 1646. However, that same year, Pope Innocent X abolished the order in disgrace.

Through painstaking and thorough research in the Vatican Secret Archive, the Inquisition Archive, and the records of the order itself, Liebreich reconstructs the history of the Piarists and the events that led to the order's downfall. Her research centers on Italian priest Father Stefano Cherubini, a Piarist who consistently flouted the order's rules against pleasure and comfort. Among his many transgressions, including wearing socks, skipping prayers, and eating well, was committing il vitio pessimo—the worst sin. In essence, Cherubini was a pedophile who consistently abused and sexually molested the helpless students under his authority.

As her book shows, Liebreich uncovers evidence that Calasanz and papal authorities were well aware of Cherubini's abuses. However, Cherubini was well connected at the Vatican; as the brother of powerful papal lawyers, he threatened to destroy the Piarists if the abuse allegations were made public. Rather than punishing the abusive priest, Calasanz instead promoted Cherubini to a bureaucratic position that removed him from direct contact with students. Though Calasanz attempted to conceal the situation from his superiors at the Vatican, they eventually found out, but were also constrained by Cherubini's ties to power. Ironically, Cherubini was eventually given Calasanz's position as head of the order, which position allowed him unrestricted access to all Piarist schools, where he could conduct himself as he wished without fear of censure. The emboldened Cherubini sought more power until his political overreaching could no longer be tolerated, at which point the order was disbanded. "Had Cherubini only been addicted to abusing children, you get the impression they would have been happy for him to continue," commented Peter Stanford in a review of Fallen Order for the London Independent.

"One reads Liebreich's vigorous account of the order's downward spiral with mounting disbelief, though with immense admiration for her calm sense of perspective," stated Christopher Sylvester in a review of Fallen Order for the London Sunday Times. Miranda France called the book "meticulously researched and beautifully written, with some splendid vignettes of life in seventeenth-century Italy, at the time of the plague, and of Galileo's discoveries," in her Manchester Guardian appraisal. In Library Bookwatch a contributor dubbed Liebreich's book "an eye-opening, revealing social analysis," while Tom Horwood, writing in the Catholic Times, stated that Fallen Order is "an important and cautionary account of the disasters that befell a well-meaning but misguided religious order." The book "offers revealing, often fascinating, and occasionally dispiriting insights," remarked Jamie Spencer in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, while in Publishers Weekly a critic cited Liebreich's "lucid, even-handed prose," and dubbed Fallen Order "engrossing and informative."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Brooklyn Rail, October, 2004, John Read, interview with Liebreich.

Catholic Times, August 1, 2004, Tom Horwood, "Misguided Clerics and Their Cover Ups."

Evening Standard & Scotsman, April 19, 2004, Christina Odone, "Priest Who Developed the Art of Cover-up."

Guardian (Manchester, England), May 22, 2004, Miranda France "Sins of the Fathers: The Piarist Order Began with Pure Motives but Its Inability to Deal with Paedophile Priests and Powerful Enemies Destroyed It," p. 15.

Independent (London, England), April 25, 2004, Peter Stanford, "A Catholic Cover-up."

Irish Examiner, May 8, 2004, Sean O'Riordan, "Author Claims to Have Uncovered First Church Sex Abuse Scandal."

Irish Times, May 19, 2004, Christine Newman, review of Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2004, review of Fallen Order, p. 568.

Library Bookwatch, November, 2004, review of Fallen Order.

Library Journal, September 15, 2004, Mimi Davis, review of Fallen Order, p. 63.

Publishers Weekly, July 12, 2004, review of Fallen Order, p. 59.

Reviewer's Bookwatch, December, 2004, Sharon Stuart, review of Fallen Order.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 14, 2004, Jamie Spencer, "Seventeenth-Century Teaching Order Offers Lessons for Modern Catholic Church," p. C10.

Sunday Times (London, England), April 18, 2004, Christopher Sylvester, review of Fallen Order.