Sounding bronze and stinking symbol

Charlie Sykes in A Bronze for Weakland? relays questions from a SNAP press release including,

why, as part of that renovation [of the Cathedral], [Archbishop Rembert] Weakland commissioned charitable money to be used to create a bronze relief of himself pictured in the biblical scene of Jesus protecting the little children (the relief is on the pedestal of the Mary, Mother of the Church Shrine, which is on the east side altar of the cathedral); ... Also in the background of the relief, according to Chicago artists Jeffrey and Anna Koh-Varilla, is a portrait of the Cathedral’s current rector, Fr. Carl Last. A recent email by Anna and Jeffery Koh-Varilla, confirms that the relief was meant to bring the biblical scene into the contemporary world of the Milwaukee church by placing Weakland in it [as protector of children].

The question could have been Another Bronze for Weakland? Around 1995 our Archdiocese commissioned the Varillas to produce this life-size bronze bust.

Bronzes are small change compared to $2 million expended in 1997 by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Supporting Fund Inc. to endow two chairs in Weakland's honor at universities in Rome, see Rome endowments to honor Weakland. And we now know that the following year $450,000 in hush money was paid to Paul Marcoux.

I still wonder how money could be found for those 1990s expenditures while financial necessity was claimed as the reason most of Milwaukee's inner city parishes were being closed.