Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [204]
16. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Nature and Scope of the Problems of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2004), p. 105, table 6.
17. Joseph Claude Harris, “The Sexual Abuse Scandal in the United States: What It Cost” (unpublished, 2010). Harris draws his data from annual studies on data related to the abuse crisis by CARA.
18. In a personal communication with the author, Mary Gautier, Ph.D., of CARA explains a discrepancy: “Dioceses are not consistent in what they report to The Official Catholic Directory, which is the only source of those data. If a diocese merges three parishes into one, it should report that it has closed three parishes and created one new parish. Too often, they do not report this accurately.” A “new” parish formed by a consolidation of existing ones, however, is not the same as a church developed and built to be a Catholic parish.
19. James Freeman, “Pennies Backed by Heaven,” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2008.
20. Ralph Cipriano, “Lavish Spending in Archdiocese Skips Inner City,” National Catholic Reporter, June 19, 1998.
21. “A Continuous, Concerted Campaign of Cover-up,” excerpts from the Grand Jury’s Report, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 22, 2005.
22. Robert West and Charles Zech, “Internal Financial Controls in the U.S. Church” (Villanova, PA: Villanova University, Center for the Study of Church Management, January 2007).
23. Susan Spencer-Wendel, “Bookkeepers Believed Priest Was Skimming from Church,” Palm Beach Post, February 18, 2009; and “Jury Finds Priest Stole Collections,” Palm Beach Post, February 23, 2009.
24. Anemona Hartocollis, “Monsignor Gets 4-Year Sentence for Large Thefts from His East Side Parish,” New York Times, September 23, 2006; Associated Press, “N.Y. Church Sues Insurer Over $1.2 Million Thefts Blamed on Priest,” Insurance Journal, January 26, 2005; Veronika Belenkaya, “Priest Who Swindled East Side Parish Released from Prison,” New York Daily News, September 22, 2007.
25. Michael Ryan draws on parish population data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a Georgetown University–affiliated research center, and financial figures drawn from media reports he has culled in more than twenty years of research on Catholic church embezzlements. Ryan estimates that nearly $90 million was embezzled from Sunday collections in the calendar year 2010.
“News articles concerning specific embezzlements occasionally include a reference to the stolen funds being replaced by the diocese acting as its own insurer,” writes Ryan. “I am amazed that any commercial insurers are or would be willing to indemnify the church or a particular diocese without requiring them to implement readily available procedures that would prevent virtually all Sunday collection embezzlements. Insurers often pay out large sums of money when an embezzlement is discovered, and many diocesan officials are quick to announce that the loss suffered by the victim parish is being recovered through insurance. Whether such losses are paid for by a commercial insurer or a fund created and maintained by the diocese, it is still a loss that need not have been sustained.”
Ryan continues: “The $90 million estimated to have been lost from collection plates in 2010 was arrived at by estimating that the average Sunday collection embezzlement totaled $25,000, or about $500 per week, and that such embezzlements are ongoing in 20 percent of parishes at any given time. For 2010, 20 percent of CARA’s reported 17,958 American parishes comes to 3,592 parishes. Multiplying that number by the estimated average loss per affected parish results in a total estimated loss of $89.8 million in 2010 alone.
“The key years (’65, ’74, ’75, ’84, etc.) were computed using the 2010 estimate of $89.8 million as the base year and applying