Posted on 04/16/2005 11:24:59 PM PDT by CatherineSiena
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.
atgal tau
Pastas, oops I mean ping
Why don't you just email each other personally instead of hogging up thread space telling everyone that you're emailing each other? Yes, YOU ARE CHILDISH - your behavior is soooo junior high.
Most of these posts are way over your head. It's not even fun anymore.
Here's how Elden Curtiss treated another whistleblower:
Teacher says archbishop told her to quit after priest report (5/19/2002)
A teacher at a Catholic school says the archbishop of Omaha asked her to resign because she told police that a priest had used a church computer to look at child pornography on the Internet.
Archbishop Elden Curtiss acknowledges that he talked with Norfolk Sacred Heart kindergarten teacher Linda Hammond, but he did not say if he asked her to resign.
She did not resign.
Madison County Attorney Joe Smith said Friday that he was considering charges against Curtiss, including a count of tampering with a witness.
More comment on Amy Welborn's blog.
Your fatal mistake was getting tangled up with Petskelis and Angelas.
You see, they don't know how to play it cool or cover their tracks. They gave your identity away in posts #298 and #299.
They're rank amateurs.
Is the perp planning his escape from Omaha?
From the Stravinskas website:
Join Our Pilgrimage!
The Catholic Response
invites you to join our 14 day Pilgrimage of Prayer and Fellowship
June 17 - 30, 2005
Holy Land and Rome
Visit:
Nazareth - Sea of Galilee - Jerusalem - Bethlehem - Rome - Sorento -
Catacombs - Vatican City
Led by Father Peter M. J. Stravinskas and Father Nicholas Gregoris
Surely you realize that many investigative reporters hang out here at Free Republic?
You, my dear, are not one of them.
Nor are you a competent detective.
I researched the costs of these trips. They normally run $2000-$3000, but this one costs $4,000....
Oops! You just stepped in it, too.
It would be interesting to learn who rooms with whom on this trip.
Well I'm sure the priests won't be rooming with the elderly ladies! Let's throw out some more scandalous speculations. Hitch a ride on the speeding train to hell.
"Nor are you a competent detective."
How do you know I'm incompetent when I never revealed your identity?
Maybe because I accused you in a personal email which you have not yet answered?
First Deep Throat, now Palladin!
I guess I'll just post to myself since everyone else is speechless.
(crickets chirping)
"hogging up thread space"------ don't worry about it, not your problem.
If these posts were way over my head, I wouldn't respond to them.
I didn't know defending one's parish from the likes of people like you and your leader was supposed to be fun.
What's fun is watching all the stuff you keep saying about the parish that really doesn't matter because you've only been here a short time. The way all of you newcomers think you are just so much better than everyone who built the parish. I think I read something in an earlier post where it was stated that you are now in control. That's okay, maybe when all is said and done you will be accomplices to this whole financial theft, since the "new" parish council advises the administrator where and how to spend the money.(which I also read in an earlier post). Maybe you can all use the prison chapel together.
Re Your Post 135
Great sense of humor!
Do you like Sungenis?
Father S. wrote the epilogue for one of his books! Maybe two?
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