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LATEST PRIESTS’ SCANDAL STEALING THE SUNDAY COLLECTION
Uncategorized September 3, 2016, 0 Comment 289LATEST PRIESTS’ SCANDAL
STEALING THE SUNDAY COLLECTION
By
Paul L. Williams, Ph.D.
(special to Great Awakening News)
As scandal gave way to more scandal within the Roman Catholic Church, reports of theft and embezzlement by Catholic priests are beginning to mount throughout the United States.
Drawing on data from the Center for Applied Research at Georgetown University, Michael Ryan, a federal law enforcement official specializing in financial audits and security investigations, calculates that $90 million in funds are embezzled every year from the Sunday collection at U.S. Catholic churches.[i] “Assuming Sunday collection embezzlements are on-going at 10 percent of the approximately 17,900 parishes at any given time,” Ryan states, “the average parish loss falls somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 per week, or roughly $50,000 per year.”[ii]
DRINKING URINE
From 2003 to 2015, Fr. Peter Miquelli, 52, pastor of St. Frances de Chantal in the Bronx, reportedly stole more than $1 million in collection plate donations. He used the money to act out unholy fantasies as a sex slave under a homosexual sex master, identified in court papers as Keith Crist. The priest shelled out $1,000 for each encounter with Crist, which often culminated in the priest drinking the sex master’s urine.[iii] In addition to the sex sessions, Miquelli used the pilfered cash for “illicit and prescription drugs” he used with Crist, ($60,000 in 2012 alone), $264,000 for a house in Brick, New Jersey, and $1,075.50 a month for his sex master’s apartment in East Harlem. The lawsuit, filed by the parishioners of St. Frances de Chantal, also alleged that Crist had lived for many months in the rectory.[iv]
WALKING AROUND MONEY
In November 2015, Fr. Edward Belczak, 70, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for stealing $573,000 from St. Thomas More Church in Troy, Michigan, where he had served as a pastor for more than thirty years. He had used the cash to purchase a luxurious condo overlooking the ocean in Palm Beach, Florida and to play the stock market. In a related case, Janice Vershuren, the office manager at St. Thomas More, also pleaded guilty to dipping into the parish’s collection plate and stealing more than $25,000.[v]
Monsignor John Woolsey, 69, pastor of the Church of St. John the Martyr in Manhattan, was convicted in 2006 of pilfering more than $800,000 from his parish. He used the funds for golf outings, cosmetic dental work, the purchase of 60 expensive watches, and walking-around money.[vi] He was sentenced to four years in prison. After serving less than a year at the Oneida Correctional Facility, the monsignor was set free by the parole board. The decision to release him was based on his behavior in prison and the messages of support from his parishioners and from Cardinal Edward Egan of the Archdiocese of New York.[vii]
BAD GAMBLING HABITS
Fr. John Regan, 47, pastor of St. Walter’s in Roselle, Illinois, was convicted on August 16, 2011 on stealing $300,000 in parish funds to fuel his gambling habit. He was sentenced to 60 days in county prison, 150 days of work release, and four years of probation. He was also order to provide $290,000 to the parish as a pay back. In 2015, Regan was released from probation even though he “willfully” neglected to provide the restitution.[viii]
In May 2008, Fr. Patrick Dunne, 63, pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows in White Plains, New York, was arrested and charged with stealing hundreds of thousands from church accounts, including a fund set aside for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Dunne took the money because of a “very powerful gambling addiction.”[ix] On October 20, 2010, Dunne pleaded guilty to second degree larceny and was placed on five years probation with the stipulation that he could not be placed in charge of the finances of his parish.[x]
“EPITOME OF PRIESTHOOD”
In 2006, Monsignor John Skehan, 79, and Fr. Francis Guinan 63, who served at St. Vincent Ferrer, a wealthy parish in West Palm Beach, Florida were accused of stealing $8.6 million in cash for the collection plate over the years.[xi] Skehan, who served St. Vincent’s for 40 years, used the stolen cash to buy a Palm Beach County condominium overlooking the ocean, a $275,000 coin collection, a cottage on the scenic cliffs of Mohar in his native Ireland, and a pub in his hometown of Kilkenny. Described by June Hefti, a parishioner at St. Vincent’s, as “the epitome of priesthood,” the monsignor also made regular payments to a woman, described in the arrest affidavit, as a “girlfriend.”[xii] Fr. Guinan, who arrived at St. Vincent’s in 2003, bought a luxurious home in Port St. Lucie and an expensive Juno Beach condo. A compulsive gambler, Fr. Guinan made regular trips to the casinos in Las Vegas and the Bahamas, paying for his losses from the collection plate cash. Guinan, too, had a “girlfriend,” who received regular payments from the prelate.”[xiii]
In 2009, a jury in West Palm Beach, Florida convicted Fr. Guinan of grand theft. He was sentenced to four years in prison and fined $100,000. Monsignor Skehan received a sentence of fourteen months after he submitted a guilty plea and a pledge to make $780,000 restitution.[xiv]
A DEATH BED CONFESSION
On his death bed, Fr. Walter Benz, 72, confessed to stealing $1.35 million from the collection plates of the two Pittsburgh parishes – – Most Blessed Sacrament and St. Mary Assumption – – where he had been stationed for 26 years. Benz had developed a close relationship with Mary Ann Albaugh with whom he “kept house.” The two went on elaborate vacations and made regular trips to Atlantic City, where they gambled for high stakes at the Showboat, Tropicana, and the Taj Mahal.[xv]
PREY TO PAY
Theft by priests was not limited to pilfering the collection plates but extended to embezzlement from parochial schools, Catholic charities, and various religious orders. In 2007, a grand jury charged Fr. Charles Newman with stealing $1,033,748 from the Archbishop Ryan High School, where he had served as teacher, principal, and president, and from his own Franciscan order. Newman stole the money, in part, to appease a school boy he had sexually molested. The youth later died of a drug overdose. In 2009, the priest entered a guilty plea and received a sentence of three to four years in prison.[xvi]
In 1999, Archbishop Richard Weakland, 72, of Milwaukee used $450,000 in church funds to pay off one of his disgruntled gay lovers. The archbishop, at that time, had steered $1.5 million to the Vatican for an endowed chair in social teaching to be established in his name at the Pontifical Gregorian University and a $500,000 chair (again in his name) in liturgy and music.[xvii]
[i] Jason Berry, Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (New York: Crown, 2011), p. 10.
[ii] Michael W. Ryan, quoted in Ibid.
[iii] Julia Marsh, “Priest Paid His Male ‘Sex Master’ from Collection Plate.” New York Post, December 10, 2015, http://nypost.com/2015/12/10/priest-paid-his-male-sex-master-from-collection-plate-lawsuit/
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Candice Williams, “Troy Priest Sentenced to 27 Months in Fraud,” Detroit News, December 1, 2015, http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2015/12/01/priest-stole-money-faces-possible-prison-sentence/76600586/
[vi] Anemona Hartocollis, “Monsignor Gets 4-Year Sentence for Large Thefts from His East Side Parish,” New York Times, September 23, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/nyregion/23priest.html
[vii] “Msgr. John G. Woolsey,” Catholic New York, August 4, 2016, http://cny.org/stories/Msgr-John-G-Woolsey,14319?
[viii] Clifford Ward, “Priest Who Gambled Away Church’s $300,000 May Lose Probation over Repayment,” Chicago Tribune, February 18, 2016, http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ct-gambling-priest-court-hearing-0219-20160218-story.html
[ix] Associated Press, “Priest Charged in Church Theft,” New York Times, May 24, 2008., http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/nyregion/24priest.html?_r=0
[x] Staff report, “Father Dunne Receives Five Year Probation for Theft,” Catholic New York, January 14, 2010, http://cny.org/stories/Father-Dunne-Receives-Five-Years-Probation-for-Theft,117?content_source=&category_id=&search_filter=&event_mode=&event_ts_from=&list_type=&order_by=&order_sort=&content_class=&sub_type=stories&town_id=
[xi] Jerome Burdi and Mike Clary, “2 Priests Accused of $8.6 Million Theft in Florida,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/29/nation/na-churchtheft29
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Jason Berry, Render unto Rome, p. 9.
[xv] Mark Fritz, “A Mystery of the Cloth,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1998, http://articles.latimes.com/1998/nov/16/news/mn-43412
[xvi] Jason Berry, Render unto Rome, pp. 11-12.
[xvii] Ibid., pp. 4-5.
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