His life work

As the new director of Respect Life, Lee Grossi could change the
abortion debate in Rhode Island forever

by Jeff Nussbaum

Lee Grossi, the new director of the Catholic Diocese of Providence's Respect Life Office, just may be a saint. His resume is a veritable list of worthy causes, his involvement in each in the name of social justice. He is on the steering committee of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, and he participates in Operation Undercover, a program to provide needy children with clean undergarments and diapers. He serves on the board of the Little Flower Home for unwed mothers in Harrisville, and he and his wife have been foster parents for Catholic Social Services.

He twice worked for the state Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF), most recently as an associate director. Jay Lindgren, director of DCYF, speaks glowingly of Grossi, calling him a compassionate man who infused his role, which was largely financial, with a deep commitment to the mission of the agency.

And yet there are those who fear Grossi. They fear him as a zealot who will soon become the most powerful force in the fight to end a woman's right to choose an abortion in Rhode Island.

State Representative Sandy Barone (D-Barrington) says that Grossi makes the abortion debate a more formidable battle. State Senator Rhoda Perry (D- Providence) goes even further, saying that his new position at Respect Life is a continuation of the Catholic Church's efforts to win monopolistic influence over a diverse legislature.

Others fear him because his administrative experience with the state may give him access and influence among state legislators. Also, with the manpower and resources he now commands, Grossi will be able to influence public policy in a way that could change the abortion debate in this state forever.

So who is Lee Grossi?

He is all of these things -- a pious and devoted man, a competent administrator, and someone who is deeply committed to social justice. He is also a pugnacious, unwavering fighter who will dedicate himself completely to the projects he takes on. Since June 30, he has been the director of the Respect Life Office, a new entity, fusing four functions previously carried out within separate branches of the diocese.

Respect Life's goal, according to Grossi, is to implement the Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, a policy paper from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that is meant to inform, educate, and unite all Catholics, and ultimately all citizens, in the defense of life. Grossi's mission, then, includes everything from trying to provide adequate housing for poor people and fighting for the rights of unborn babies to pushing for welfare reform that preserves the dignity of the welfare recipient.

Grossi stresses all of these things and notes that respecting life is necessary in all of its stages and situations, including its last. (The office is against assisted suicide.) The Pastoral Plan, however, makes it clear that the primary focus of an office like Respect Life should be abortion.

"Among the many important issues involving the dignity of human life with which the Church is concerned, abortion necessarily plays a central role. Abortion's direct attack on innocent human life is precisely the kind of violent act that can never be justified," it reads.

Today, the Respect Life Office has the resources and the man at the helm to put a gentle face on such divisive issues. It seems a recipe for success.

The man at the helm

At first glance, Lee Grossi seems an unlikely candidate for the position. Although he has spent the majority of his professional life in state government, colleagues don't recall his taking a visible position on heated issues.

The youngest of three children, Grossi and his family moved to Rhode Island from the small town of Cesano, Italy, when he was seven years old. Although his father had been a farmer in Italy, both parents took textile and factory jobs in order to give their children an education and a chance for a better life.

Grossi realized their dream, earning a bachelor's degree in economics from Providence College and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Rhode Island. In the process, he created in himself the kind of rift that separates generations -- Grossi encompassed both the new and old worlds, holding an advanced degree and sophisticated training in public policy as well as the memory of a simpler life guided by unmalleable beliefs.

Conflicts between the private and the public Grossi began to surface when he became the first administrator of RIte Care. As part of a team setting up the state's Medicaid managed-care program four years ago, Grossi dealt with issues involving women's health, birth control, and rape counseling. The professional and personal were colliding for him, and those who didn't share his feelings say they felt the heat.

Judith Allonby is a former attorney for Rhode Island Legal Services who worked with Grossi on RIte Care. She says he publicly insulted people who crossed him and berated those who questioned his work or his beliefs. Allonby saw Grossi as someone who didn't care if his initiatives harmed her clients.

"The idea that he is doing something called respect life is a joke," she says. Included in the first RIte Care program were a change in the Medicaid-eligibility rules that denied 1000 kids coverage and another that denied women younger than 18 access to rape crisis centers without first consulting their HMO.

The fact that Grossi is heading up an organization that touches the lives of women distresses Allonby even more, because she saw Grossi as someone who had little respect for his female co-workers.

Here again, the two sides of Lee Grossi emerge. State Senator Thomas Izzo (D-Cranston) is the pro-choice chairman of the Senate Health, Education, and Welfare Committee. He has known Grossi in both a personal and professional capacity for years and disagrees with Allonby's view. "That has not been my experience. Lee has the capacity to have good conversations and listen," Izzo says. "You can disagree in an agreeable fashion with Lee."

The making of RIte Care is now history, and Grossi seems ready for his new job, one that has him pushing the envelope on some highly visible issues. He credits his heightened commitment to social justice to a continuing process of enlightenment that culminated in 1978, when he formed a personal relationship with Christ, he says, and heard the gospel call to social justice.

Although Grossi won't specify the significance of 1978, it is the year the governor asked him to serve on a team to implement a federal court order to improve state prison conditions. Perhaps the squalor and lack of dignity afforded the prisoners touched Grossi, or perhaps it was that in a sophisticated man such as Grossi, who believed in basic morality, public and private could no longer be separated. Either way, Grossi was moved, and he has now embraced a job that will make social justice his primary obligation.

Size matters

Although Grossi's deep personal commitment to the issues in which he is involved is without question, it is his political connectedness that abortion-rights advocates fear most.

When Grossi was the state budget director, he appeared numerous times before the Senate and House Finance committees, forming relationships with many of the legislators. Sources within the State House remember his being there "virtually everyday" during budget season.

As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Michael Lenihan (D-East Greenwich) has had Lee Grossi testify before him many times. He notes that Grossi is known in the Senate by a number of the committee chairs.

In a professional context, Lenihan found Grossi to be affable, honest, and an excellent advocate for his position. As for Grossi's relationships within the legislature, "any time you make contacts on a personal level, it carries over into whatever your issue of the day is," says Lenihan. He is quick to stress, however, that just knowing legislators does not mean they will go against their constituencies and values to offer support.

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington, DC-based organization of Catholics who support choice, notes that the national trend has been for dioceses and the National Conference of Bishops to hire more hard-liners than moderates. In Grossi, the Providence diocese may have found both. "The bishops are savvy political players, and like many public-interest groups, they hire from the government," says Kissling.

Although Grossi contends that he will not act as a lobbyist, he does recognize his political experience as an asset. "We're part of one team now, and to the extent that we can help each other, we're going to do that," he says. "If we're trying to reach 150 senators and representatives and that requires a more intensive effort, then I'm available to do that."

Indeed, the Respect Life Office is poised to be so powerful not just on the strength of its leader but on the strength of its size. Today, 10 of an expected 14 employees are in place, and they work with an annual operating budget of $435,000. Of that money, $317,000 comes from the diocese, the rest from donated funds.

While Grossi calls the overall sum "a responsible level of support," Frances Kissling thinks that the size of the organization represents much more than a "responsible level" of support.

"This is huge. There is no doubt in my mind that this is one of the largest offices in the nation," she says. "I don't think they have 14 people in the pro-life office in Washington, DC."

It is certainly huge as far as Rhode Island goes. Susan Closter-Godoy is the chair of the Rhode Island Choice Coalition, an organization of pro-choice groups that includes Planned Parenthood, the 2-to-1 Coalition, Voices for Choice, and the Rhode Island office of the American Civil Liberties Union. When asked about her group's activities in light of the Respect Life Office, she responded that her organization is expanding, too. The expansion: one full-time community-organizing position.

In other words, the Choice Coalition is waltzing into a gunfight with knives. Not only are they outstaffed, but there is loss of efficiency in coordinating all of these organizations -- a situation in sharp contrast to Respect Life's streamlined, unified structure.

Form follows function

The Respect Life Office unites four preexisting offices under one roof. An information and education branch conducts outreaches to the 156 parishes in Rhode Island on everything from electoral awareness to family violence. The pastoral-care branch provides counseling on alternatives to abortion and natural family planning. "The church's response isn't that this [pregnancy] is your problem. The church is there to help," says Grossi.

Project Rachel is the branch that provides post-abortion reconciliation. "Our position is that we're not here to judge," he continues. "We think that the act of abortion is immoral and sinful. The church's position is that we judge the act - we never judge the person."

The final branch is the most visible -- the public-policy branch, which was credited with forcing the General Assembly in June to pass a law banning so-called partial-birth abortion. To accomplish this, Maria Parker, the director of public policy, had at her command a database called life-net. Of the 156 parishes in Rhode Island, 130 participate in this phone-tree program, which amounts to thousands of people calling their legislators when important public-policy issues, such as partial-birth abortion, arise.

Perry sees the efforts to affect policy as a continuation of the Providence diocese's attempt to gain even greater influence over both the legislature and the state, but Grossi stresses that his office's mission is to respect life at all of its stages.

"The church believes in one consistent pro-life ethic -- that you respect life in all of its forms. If we support a welfare-reform program that doesn't respect the dignity of those [who] don't succeed in our capitalistic environment, that's not respecting life. And if we're not involved in providing adequate housing and services for these people, that's not respecting life," he says.

But if the partial-birth abortion bill is any indicator, the church's focus is clearly on changing policy, specifically abortion policy. State Representative Sandy Barone became acquainted with the organization Grossi now runs during the debate over the partial-birth abortion bill. After intense pressure from Respect Life's public-policy branch and thousands of calls from people in life-net, legislators passed the legislation after it was attached to a women's health bill mandating a 48-hour hospital stay following a mastectomy.

Although Barone was the primary co-sponsor of that bill, she ultimately had to vote against her own legislation once the partial-birth segment was attached.

The pro-life victory had people telling Barone that the pro-choice forces had to get organized. She contends, however, that organization is not the problem. "It's not that we're not well-organized -- it's that we don't have a pulpit to preach from every Sunday and we don't have a newspaper that arrives at everyone's door. [The Providence Visitor has a circulation of 40,000, and every legislator receives a complementary copy.] In short, we don't have the Catholic Church -- we don't have any church."

Still, Lee Grossi has a tough job ahead of him, especially in a state where two-thirds of the population is Catholic and in a nation where an estimated 30 percent of all abortions are performed on women who call themselves Catholic. When asked during a recent interview with the Phoenix if he likes the job, a rare smile crosses Grossi's lips. It is a smile tinged with the recognition of a daunting task ahead.

"These are very difficult issues that divide our society, and the only way to accomplish our goal is by prayer and by education," he says. "The Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which has been in existence for over 25 years, isn't going to be overcome any other way."

When told that some abortion-rights advocates fear him, Grossi is noticeably startled. He clearly does not want to be feared. "I've dedicated a large part of my career . . . of my life, to child service."

Picking up a copy of the "Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook," Grossi turns to the page on child deaths, and his voice gets very quiet. "If we have one death from child abuse in a year, that's defined as a tragedy. If there's two child deaths in a year, there's a concern as to whether the state is adequately protecting children," he says. "And if there are three child deaths in a year, there's an outcry that the system has to be changed."

His voice drops even lower and becomes almost inaudible. "Yet, if we have 5400 abortions in a year, we look the other way . . . Rather than giving my life to trying to avoid one death, I'm going to try to do something more significant."

The two Lee Grossis are now one, and this is what has abortion-rights advocates so concerned.