Spending at parish soars with new priest

A noted Catholic thinker who was brought in to run St. Anthony Catholic Church in south Omaha allegedly spent more than $400,000 in 1 and 1/2 years - at a small parish that normally spent about $50,000 a year.

Police are investigating the Rev. Peter Stravinskas' handling of St. Anthony's parish funds after parishioners filed a report of a possible embezzlement. Detectives have told a judge it appears parish money was spent on Stravinskas' personal expenses, including travel, mortgage payments and credit cards.

In a court filing last month, Omaha police said two parish funds - one worth $82,000 and the other worth $71,000 - were nearly wiped out. Only $4,200 remained from the $153,000 total, detectives told a judge.

But The World-Herald learned this week that those funds represented only part of St. Anthony's savings.

And people knowledgeable about the situation said the money taken from those accounts was only part of a larger amount spent from August 2002, when Stravinskas arrived, until March 2004, when the Archdiocese of Omaha froze parish funds.

Stravinskas has not been charged with a crime and remains St. Anthony's temporary administrator. He has declined to comment. He was scheduled to return Friday night from a trip to Rome, said the Rev. Nicholas Gregoris, who answered the door at the rectory Friday.

The Rev. Gregory Baxter, chancellor of the archdiocese, declined to comment, citing the police investigation.

Police have declined to comment on the extent of Stravinskas' alleged misspending.

Church financial records published in parish documents indicate, however, that St. Anthony had $313,000 in savings in January 2002. It is unclear what that total was when Stravinskas arrived that summer, but parishioners said St. Anthony had no extraordinary expenses before Stravinskas came.

The parish typically brought in about $50,000 a year and spent that much, said Albinas Reskevicius, a parish trustee for nearly 40 years until early 2003. He said he had no knowledge of parish spending since that time.

Omaha Archbishop Elden Curtiss brought Stravinskas, 54, to Omaha from Mount Pocono, Pa. A clerical group Stravinskas had founded there, the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, had been disbanded.

Stravinskas has written numerous books and founded magazines, the Catholic Answer and the Catholic Response, defending traditional Roman Catholic teachings.

Stravinskas, a native of New Jersey, is a priest of the Diocese of Boise, Idaho, but hasn't worked there in 25 years.

Stravinskas shares Lithuanian ancestry with many of the St. Anthony parishioners, but there has been no more explanation of why such a noted priest landed in a shrinking neighborhood parish.

Curtiss declined to be interviewed Friday about the parish's finances or about how he knows Stravinskas or why he brought him to Omaha.

In a May 2002 sermon, the archbishop praised Stravinskas as "a first-rate scholar with a rich academic background," and "a herald of truth in the church."

Curtiss delivered the sermon in New York City to mark the 25th anniversary of Stravinskas' ordination.

"Now that I am 70, I will be fortunate to be associated with you and your ministry for another decade," Curtiss said. "You are a special priest and a special friend to me and many people who really know you. I consider you a gift in my ministry and in my life."

In Omaha, Stravinskas registered the Priestly Society of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman as a Nebraska nonprofit, based at the St. Anthony rectory.

Stravinskas also hired a contractor to renovate parish buildings. Contractor Mark Warsocki said the priest paid him and others to do $126,000 in work.

In the church, Warsocki said, he installed a marble floor in the sanctuary, painted the ceiling and repaired the tabernacle area.

Stravinskas wanted to convert the rectory, a former convent, into a more comfortable residence for himself, Gregoris and a seminarian, Warsocki said. They felt cramped in 9-by-13-foot rooms where nuns once lived, the contractor said.

He built a three-room suite for Stravinskas, plus a library, in the rectory's unfinished basement.

Warsocki installed new flooring, a patio door, windows, a wine rack and a deck on the rectory's main floor, he said, and converted four second-floor sleeping rooms into two living suites with individual bathrooms.

Warsocki said Stravinskas also had hired him to create two more living suites. But Warsocki said Stravinskas stopped the work on Good Friday 2004, after the archdiocese audit. The contractor said he had $16,000 worth of labor left to do.

Warsocki described the work as needed and not lavish. He said Stravinskas had him buy materials from home improvement stores with the priest's personal credit card.

Warsocki said he undercharged because of inexperience and a desire to improve a parish where his grandfather and father had belonged.

Really !!! How do you know, you only showed up when your leader did. Have you actually looked at the parking lot in front of the school at all before or after church ??? '84 GMC pick-up, 90's taurus, 90's Wagoneer, some escorts, couple of mid-80s Cutlass' etc... If anyone does own a Lexus it's probably at least 10 years old . As for fur coats ----- give me a break. All of these people came over here with nothing and have worked all their lives to get what they have and yes some have done better than others, but so what, they deserve to buy a new car now and then. Spit on their Hispanic neighbors ---- again how do you know you weren't here until very recently. Right, kept a few thousand dollars in the bank which is no longer there. Payed two employees ....... I don't know anything about that and wonder how you do ? Didn't spend one ounce of effort to feed the poor ----- you have no idea. They had a nice social hall while Jesus lived in filth------- the social was established only a few years ago and it consists of some tables and a coffee pot in an old school classroom --PLEASE

Correction: They are the only two priests in their society (how cozy) since their third partner got in trouble. I am speaking of Christopher Clay, who is still under investigation in the Scranton Diocese for molestation of teenage boys:

File on alleged priest abuse gone

Priest removed from active ministry locally in 2002 barred this week in Texas

By BONNIE ADAMS

Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times Leader

A file with information related to a potential priest-abuse case is missing from the Monroe County District Attorney's Office.
Monroe County District Attorney E. David Christine Jr. said any criminal investigation into former Bishop Hafey High School priest Christopher Clay will not move forward unless alleged victims come forward.

A sexual-abuse allegation against Clay by a young man arose in 2002 during a separate diocese investigation into two priests at the Society of St. John in Pike County. Clay, who is not the subject of criminal charges or a lawsuit, is being investigated by the Diocese of Scranton.

Christine said Clay's case file was under the care of former District Attorney Mark Pazuhanich.

Pocono Mountain Regional Police told Christine this week that Pazuhanich made an unusual request in 2002 that the file be given directly to him instead of an assistant district attorney. Usually, an assistant district attorney reviews cases and then confers with the district attorney to determine whether charges should be filed.

Christine recently talked with his employees, who said they had not seen the file. "(The file) never got beyond him," Christine said of Pazuhanich. Christine said he's not accusing Pazuhanich, who is awaiting trial on child molestation charges in Wilkes-Barre, of wrongdoing related to the missing file.

Pazuhanich had said in a May 2002 interview with the Times Leader that Clay's alleged misconduct happened two to three years earlier in the Mount Pocono area. He had said the alleged victim was a juvenile at the time.

Pazuhanich had said the investigation was ongoing and no charges had been filed. He said the Pocono Mountain Regional Police Department also was investigating. Pazuhanich could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Christine said he learned about the missing file after a Dallas, Texas, newspaper published a story Wednesday about Clay. The priest recently celebrated Mass in a Fort Worth church despite the Diocese of Scranton removing him from active ministry in 2002.

Christine said the missing file originated with the Lackawanna County District Attorney's Office and a copy was forwarded to the Pocono Mountain Regional Police Department.

The district attorney said he believed the file contained information of a civil nature such as a videotape of a deposition. He said the file contained nothing that couldn't be reconstructed if needed.

The same young man who made sexual abuse allegations against Clay filed a lawsuit as "John Doe" in federal court in Scranton against two other priests, the Rev. Eric Ensey and the Rev. Carlos Urrutigoity. That case is pending.

In a deposition included in the federal lawsuit against Ensey and Urrutigoity, John Doe testified Clay had invited him to the Oratory in Monroe County. He said Clay "proceeded to get me roaring drunk. I remember throwing up in his room all over myself and him taking me into the next room and undressing me and then I woke up naked the next morning."

Christine said no alleged victim approached law enforcement to request a criminal investigation regarding Clay.

John Doe's attorney, James Bendell of Port Townsend, Wash., reacted Wednesday to the missing file. "This snafu makes me really worry whether the children of Pennsylvania are being protected from potentially dangerous predators."

The Diocese of Fort Worth this week barred Clay from participating in church activities in the Texas diocese.

Diocese of Fort Worth Chancellor, the Rev. Robert Wilson, said Wednesday that Clay was assisting at St. Mary the Virgin Church in Arlington, Texas. Wilson said the church's pastor, a longtime friend of Clay's, had not verified Clay was in good standing.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.