-255x328.jpg)
CINCINNATI — The Archdiocese of Cincinnati sued a former business manager on Nov. 26 to obtain the more than $353,000 he is believed to have embezzled from area parishes.
“Justice is a very important word — it's not about revenge or punishment,” archdiocesan communication director Dan Andriacco told EWTN News on Nov. 28.
“It's a matter of justice for the people who donated the money to their parishes. … We have a very strong sense of stewardship. The people in the pews who donate the money to their parish do that because they know it will be used for good purposes that they support,” Andriacco said.
The archdiocese was joined in its lawsuit against Thomas Martin by the three parishes from which he embezzled just over $353,000 since 2000. The parishes are Holy Family, St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist.
His “regular scheme” was to fail to deposit money entrusted to him for parish bank accounts and to forge checks, among other methods.
Martin is joined as a defendant in the Hamilton County suit by Mack Martin Enterprises and Springwater Sweets and Flowers, companies he controlled and to which he allegedly funneled money.
In addition to the charge of theft, Martin faces a count of breach of fiduciary duty, because, as the parishes' business manager, he was given “trust and special confidence.”
“We want to be sure … it can be used for the purposes for which it was donated,” Andriacco said, “so we're really dedicated to getting the money back when someone steals from us.”
New Financial Controls
According to a Nov. 26 statement from the archdiocese, the discovery of the missing funds was made when it instituted “extensive, strengthened financial controls.”
Andriacco noted that the Cincinnati Archdiocese has done a lot in the past four years to implement increased safeguards against theft from parishes.
A new standardized accounting system is being implemented, the consolidation of funds is happening across parish organizations, and a new full-time auditor coincidentally began his position this week at the archdiocese.
Andriacco stressed that the theft hurt real people in the diocese. “There's one parish that he stole $27,000 from. And it doesn't seem like very much, but it's a small parish and a poor parish.”
“It's really an issue of justice, and that's the reason why we have to take this very seriously, to do our very best to get the money back.”
Jimmy Akin: Was James, not Peter, the head of the Church after Jesus?
Matthew Warner: Ask Fr. Barron: What gives you hope for future of the Church?
Comments
Post a Comment
We had a parishioner and was also a Deacon and was loved by the parish. He was manager of funds from a neighboring parish and embezzled over 350,000 . He went to jail and did 3 years. His wife divorced him. I believe that this guy should do time
As a result of this case, there should be a set of “Best Practices” for ALL parishes in the USA and Canada, so this cannot happen anywhere again, or as easily.
We must be able to trust those that handle church funds. There must be accountability and transparency at every step in the process.
I must admit I find it amusing this Archdiocese is talking about justice, but only when it pertains to *money* & only when it involves *a lay person*. If it’s not about money and the poor choices of lay people, they all sing a different tune: “Let’s forgive and forget.”
It is interesting that the Bishop of Cincinnati apparently does not consider “stewardship” to entail what the people in the pews think when they donated to parishes that he is fixated on closing—and that it took a Roman order to force him to stand down on his firesale of parishes and their assets (the Diocese even had a website where you could buy church goods from the parishes he suppressed).
Cincinnati’s Communications Director, Mr. Andriacco, claims the Archdiocese has done a lot in the past four years to implement increased safeguards against theft from parishes, but a review of the Sunday collection guidelines included as an attachment to Cincinnati’s October Self Insurance Newsletter reveals those guidelines are only “recommended” and therefore might well be ignored by many of the pastors.
As long as the use of secure procedures remains an option pastors are free to ignore, the Archdiocese will continue to experience embezzlements. Further, and while the recommended procedures are no doubt better than whatever guidelines they superseded, they are not as comprehensive as the guidelines developed by the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2005, and recommended by the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management (NLRCM) as their one and only recommended “Best Practice” for handling the collections. Cincinnati’s guidelines leave the collections vulnerable to repetitive theft - even in those parishes that fully implement them.
As the former Treasurer of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Schnurr must know this. One can only wonder what motives or fears have kept him from mandating genuinely secure procedures Archdiocese-wide.
It seems every diocese should have an independent Financial Controller and an Internal Auditor to perform periodic reviews of each parish and to set GAAP standards for how each parish balances their General Ledger.
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
The time period for commenting on this article has expired.