US Presidential Elections: Romney, as Mormon church leader, became master of many keys - by Jason Horowitz

 In the back office of his Weston, Mass., headquarters a quarter century ago, Mitt Romney, the chief Mormon authority in the Boston area, told the leader of his Spanish-speaking congregation that he would not directly pay for lawyers to help the growing number of illegal immigrants in his church. Then he carefully instructed his subordinate on how to circumvent the Mormon church's new hard line against such assistance and subsidize their legal aide.

"In those issues I cannot help you financially to pay for lawyers," Romney said, according to Jose Francisco Anleu, a Guatemalan immigrant. "But what I can do is allow you to give them food assistance from the bishop's warehouse," a church welfare pantry. The money saved could be used to "pay lawyers." He reminded Anleu that he could use church funds to cover rent, utilities and health care for his needy members. The money came from Anleu's budget, but, as Anleu noted decades later, it was a budget sustained by Romney's office.

A close look at Romney's leadership in his church shows how his actions sometimes clashed with his political positions, which include advocating on the campaign trail for a policy of "self-deportation." Romney's decades as a lay church leader — first as bishop and later as stake president, which gave him dominion over all the churches in and around Boston — shaped a man as orthodox and committed to his faith as any presidential nominee in history. It is an experience that demonstrates Romney's mastery of the institution and confidence in his authority.

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