By Lane Daniels
After two public records requests, seven appeals, and a $1,141.67 procurement fee, student Joshua Levin uncovered that the University of Massachusetts Boston solicited funds for the Vatican.
On March 27, 2025, Levin’s fellow reporter entered The Mass Media newsroom at UMass Boston and asked, “Does anyone know why the police just stopped me from walking up the stairs?” An event was being held across from the newsroom and police stood guard, denying entrance to uninvited guests. Levin had seen signs advertising the event with a Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences logo, but assumed it was private. After trying, and failing, to send in a camera crew, Levin turned to public records.
A few days later, Levin requested event information including emails, budget documents, receipts, and space reservation forms from the university’s public records department. After the response deadline passed, Levin appealed to the Supervisor of Records, who ordered UMass to answer. Levin eventually received four invoices showing $26,712 in event expenses. UMass noted the event was funded by “philanthropic sources,” and not university money. But Levin was left wondering, “What about the rest of the records?” He made additional requests and received no response.
Failure to provide records is generally considered an implicit denial and can be appealed to the public entity that declined to release the documents, or the state’s department that oversees public records requests. So, Levin took the next logical step for a reporter seeking information: he appealed the initial denial to the Massachusetts Supervisor of Records, who oversees issues with records requests and can order public agencies to respond.
The supervisor ordered UMass to respond — but the university had a catch. Levin was quoted $1,662.50 for the university to produce the remaining records. After he narrowed the search terms from 15 to 10 people, the cost was reduced to $1,141.67. The supervisor ordered UMass to justify the expense. In response, UMass cited FERPA, the federal law protecting student privacy. It argued the records were subject to this exemption, and required review and redaction. According to the university, its lowest-paid qualified employee earned more than $25 an hour.
Levin appealed again, arguing that the university’s email system could search 1,000 inboxes in 30 seconds, making the estimate unreasonable because, “they don’t say how they got to this magic number of hours.” Furthermore, Levin argued that FERPA did not apply in this case.
Although the Supervisor of Records never ruled on the claims in Levin’s appeal, the office deemed the fee “reasonable” after an in-camera inspection of the records. “They just ignored it,” Levin said. Rather than taking further action, which would have involved suing or appealing to a superior court, Levin and his fellow reporters decided to pay the price last December.
But the following February, Levin and the newsroom were down more than $1,000 and still did not have the records. He appealed again. The Supervisor of Records ordered UMass to send them, writing that “[w]here it appears Mr. Levin has paid the fee to receive the responsive records, it is unclear why UMass has not provided the responsive records.” For the next month, Levin gradually received the records and began to piece the story together.
More than a year after filing his initial request, Levin published his story “Summit Funds Sent to Vatican Total $380k.” The records revealed $380,000 in payments to the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which contradicted Summit promotional materials describing the Pontifical Academy as the sponsor. “This appears to be money going the opposite direction,” Levin said.
These records reflected deep university involvement with the Vatican. According to Levin’s reporting, University Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco arranged a wire transfer to support Pontifical Academy climate summits around the world, and was a member of the academy’s Executive Board, appointed by Pope Francis. Assistant Chancellor Matthew Fenlon, the University’s public records officer, helped organize the fundraising efforts. “Both of them were soliciting donations,” Levin said. “That definitely raised red flags in my mind.”
Levin also found it “improper” that taxpayers funded this work, as the university is a public institution. The staff were soliciting donations and working with the Vatican “during their working hours. They’re using University email accounts… There are taxpayer resources being used.” Levin mentioned the separation of church and state: “I’ve had people tell me this seems fishy…and I can see that pretty clearly,” Levin said.
Despite taking a year and costing $1,141.67 for review and redaction, the records Levin ultimately received still included confidential information — in fact, the records had no redactions, whatsoever, even for information UMass had previously told Levin was confidential. For example, the purportedly confidential identities of UMass Boston donors are exempt from disclosure under the public records law as trade secrets. Yet, those names appeared repeatedly in the released emails. Additionally, emails titled “Vatican transfers” included unredacted Vatican bank account numbers three separate times. “Wow, these should have been redacted. What else didn’t they redact?” Levin thought.
This experience showed Levin how “broken” the Massachusetts public records system is. UMass still has not produced requested emails from the Chancellor’s inbox or the Chief of Staff’s inboxes. Individuals are legally promised “timely and appropriate relief” in response to records requests, which makes Levin wonder when relief stops being timely and appropriate. For him, a year is too long. “The enforcement mechanism needs to be stronger,” he said. “You have to provide the records.”
Levin recently earned honors for his persistence from the New England First Amendment Coalition (NEFAC) and its partners. NEFAC, MuckRock, and the Society of Professional Journalists New England sponsor a monthly public records contest for student journalists.
Despite the challenges he faced, accessing public records allowed Levin to turn speculation into fact. “For every claim I make, I am careful. I find a document supporting it,” he said. His curiosity ultimately led to clarity and accountability through public documents. “At some point transparency has to win out, and that’s our job as the media, to make sure transparency wins,” he said.
Levin is a communications major pursuing a journalism career. He first learned how to submit public records requests in a high school journalism class and has not stopped since. Levin plans to continue reporting on critical events affecting his community, even if he faces difficulty, he said: “There are other requests that I plan on and am working on filing . . . that I anticipate a fight in.” He has already proven he is ready for that fight.
Lane Daniels is NEFAC’s 2026 First Amendment intern. She is a rising junior at Wesleyan University where she is majoring in the College of Letters (philosophy, literature and history) and theater. She plans to attend law school after graduation.