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.

I don't know how this would affect our parish if we ever are in this kind of situation, but I thought it was interesting and worth posting here.

Vatican bars Boston archdiocese seizure of parish assets
Catholic World News ^ | 8-11-05 | Not attributed

Posted on 08/11/2005 4:44:24 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat

In a ruling that presents new complications for a sweeping reconfiguration plan in the Boston archdiocese, the Vatican has ruled that the archdiocese cannot unilaterally claim the assets of parishes that have been closed.

The Vatican decision affects not only the Boston archdiocese-- where it could delay parish closings-- but also other American dioceses that are seeking bankruptcy protection in federal courts. The decision addresses the hotly disputed topic: whether parish assets belong to the diocese, or must be considered separate.

In response to canonical protests filed by parishioners of several closed parishes, the Congregation for the Clergy said that parish assets cannot be seized by the archdiocese, and can be turned over to the archdiocese only with the consent of the pastors and their parish finance councils.

The exact content of the Vatican ruling has not been made public, but officials at the Boston archdiocese acknowledged that the ruling from the Congregation for the Clergy would raise new difficulties for the parish-closing process. However, Archbishop Sean O'Malley told reporters that the reconfiguration of the archdiocese would continue; he said that the Vatican was generally supportive of the process, and required only that the changes be made in accordance with the requirements of canon law.

The Boston archdiocese has been troubled by public protests and lawsuits-- brought in both civil and canonical courts-- by Catholics who objected to the closing of their parishes. The Vatican ruling affects seven such parishes, whose faithful had brought their canonical appeal to the Vatican.

The Congregation for the Clergy ruled that when a geographical parish is merged into another parish, the assets of the suppressed parish become subject to the control of the new parish, rather than the archdiocese. The properties of the old parish which has been closed can be surrendered to the archdiocese only with the consent of the new parish administration, the Vatican said.

The Boston archdiocese has begun talks with the pastors of the parishes affected by the Vatican ruling, hoping to obtain their consent for the handover of assets. At stake are millions of dollars in bank accounts in real-estate holdings, which the Archdiocese of Boston had planned to use to ease a severe financial crisis.

The Vatican's canonical decision has immediate implications for other American dioceses-- such as Portland, Oregon, and Tucson, Arizona-- where Church officials have told bankruptcy courts that they do not control the financial assets of their parishes. That contention has been challenged by plaintiffs in sex-abuse lawsuits, who argue that the diocese or archdiocese is the sole legal owner of parish properties.

Critics of the position adopted by the Archdiocese of Portland had pointed to the apparent contradiction between the claims of that archdiocese, which said that it could not control parish properties, and the plans of the Boston archdiocese to close parishes and take control of their assets.

The legal questions involved in parish ownership are likely to be addressed first by the federal bankruptcy court in Oregon, where the Portland archdiocese had been the first to claim a separation between archdiocesan and parish assets.

Bingo? That's funny! Remember the bingo account in NJ from a previous post:
"When Stravinskas took over as pastor of St. John's Byzantine Church in Bayonne, NJ he TOOK over and did everything HIS way which began with his redecorating the parish rectory with new phones, carpets and furniture. A sale of the old items was stopped by the bishop after it was seen in the paper.There was NOTHING wrong with what was already in the rectory. The finances of the parish were not overflowing and unnecessary spending should have been curtailed.

He never really took part in church affairs, rarely showed his face in the Parish Center and spent so much time on the Road away from his parish that no one was sure who would be saying mass that week. Temporary priests were always coming and going. We hardly ever saw him.

He was the only pastor who had to know immediately the morning after bingo how much money was deposited in the bingo account and in many cases the money was removed ASAP.
When he was asked questions about the finances of St. John's his reply was the "I do NOT have to answer to you or anyone else."

His going was a relief to many people. Perhaps this investigation is for the better. And we all know what "I decline to comment" usually means. Perhaps praying for the parish is more in order. Yours in Christ."

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