More Churchgoers Being Victimized in Money Fraud

By Audrey Barrick, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is scheduled later this month to address an issue more congregants are becoming victims to - embezzlement. The bishops will decide on whether to adopt more stringent regulations on financial matters.

John Skehan and Francis Guinan, two priests from the Palm Beach, Fla., diocese, were charged in September for stealing an estimated $8.6 million from the church over 42 years. The embezzled money, which had gone to Skehan's "girlfriend" and a condominium on the oceanfront among other things, according to Time magazine, had not been discovered until after the priest retired in 2003. That was when the diocesan accountant Denis Hamel came in to inspect the bookkeeping on Sunday collections. At that time, audits ran in parishes only when priests changed.

A study in January by researchers at Villanova University, a Roman Catholic institution in Villanova, Pa., found that 85 percent of Roman Catholic diocese that responded discovered embezzlement of church money in the last five years, and 11 percent of the cases involved sums of more than $500,000. While the Catholic Church is said to have some of the most rigorous financial guidelines of any denomination, the new study found parishes often ignoring them.

Skehan reportedly told police that he felt he was "never properly paid." The median salary for priests, according to Time, is about $35,000, including free room and board.

Catholics are not the only religious group seeing insecure church funds. In June, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) fired its second-ranking finance officer Judy Golliher, who admitted to embezzling more than $100,000. Baptists in the General Convention of Texas passed measures in November to create tighter controls for church starts after three pastors has misused $1.3 million.

Leon Panetta, the former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, told USA Today that the Church has got to be able to "move into the 21st century and begin to apply some management practices that can help ensure that they protect the trust of their parishioners."

Still, among the 19,000 parishes and the $6 billion given each year in donations, the amount of money stolen is miniscule, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said.

Although miniscule, congregants are feeling devastated.

"I would feel better about all this if he wasn't a priest and was just some con man who conned us," Kathleen Pfeiffer told USA Today, and who no longer attends St. Jude Catholic Church in Mineral, Va., since her pastor was charged with embezzling $600,000 in January.