Former Pastor at St. Helena Church Must Repay Parish or Remain in Prison for Another Year, Judge Says

By John Caniglia
The Plain Dealer
September 23, 2014

http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/index.ssf/2014/09/judge_former_priest_must_repay.html

Andrew Matthews

A judge Tuesday ordered a former pastor at St. Helena Church on Cleveland's West Side to begin paying back more than $280,000 in restitution to the church.

If the Rev. Andre Matthews doesn't, he will remain in prison for another year, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Richard McMonagle said.

The judge's office scheduled a hearing Oct. 23 in which McMonagle will decide Matthews' status. The former pastor has been in prison since Nov. 5, when McMonagle sentenced him to two years for fleecing the church and parishioners, a move that allowed Matthews to pay credit card bills and buy cars, as well as pay college tuition for his children.

Authorities said he stole $176,000 from the church and $106,000 from 89-year-old Aurelia Papp, who sat in her wheelchair in the back of McMonagle's courtroom and watched the proceedings. She did not wish to comment after the hearing.

The church, on West 65th Street, is teetering on bankruptcy after Matthews siphoned money from the church and its bingo fund, said James Gutierrez, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor. It is one of several Romanian Catholic churches in Northeast Ohio, and it is one of the oldest in the United States. It has 80 to 100 families.

Matthews, 55, asked McMonagle to be released from prison. He has served much of the sentence at the Pickaway Correctional Institution, south of Columbus.

Matthews' attorney, Gerald Gold, said Matthews lost 100 pounds while behind bars and his health is decaying rapidly. Gold said Matthews can no longer see, and he should be released before he dies. Gold did not identify Matthews' illness.

"The church hasn't killed anyone since the Inquisition,'' Gold told McMonagle, referring to the Catholic Church's fight against heresy that began in the 1200s.

Gutierrez countered, saying mercy first should be shown to the victims. He said Matthews "made his own bed'' and chose to steal repeatedly from his congregation.

The prosecutor asked McMonagle to put off making a decision about Matthews' release until a settlement could be reached. Gutierrez said Matthews has yet to pay anything back, but he has hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, including two properties. His wife, Corina, sold off one of them last month, Gutierrez said.

Gold said Matthews has offered to pay back some of the money.

"The offer is on the table; I don't know what more we can do,'' Gold said. Prosecutors put the proposed offer at $125,000.

Alan Kraus, who represents the church, said he believed a settlement with Matthews could be made in the next three to four weeks. He said the church was on the brink of extinction.

He said that while Matthews sought compassion from McMonagle, the former priest never showed any to parishioners.

Matthews had been pastor at St. Helena for 11 years. He left in September 2011. Matthews' thefts were discovered that year, when church leaders noticed some bills were not being paid, Gutierrez said.

The leaders took their concerns to county prosecutors, and sheriff's deputies investigated.

Gutierrez told The Plain Dealer last year that investigators combed through thousands of pages of financial documents and found hundreds of withdrawals by Matthews from the church's bank account dating to 2005. Records were not available for prior years, he said.

Matthews originally introduced parishioners to a woman he said was his close cousin. In fact, it was his wife, a lie he peddled for years.

The church has sued Matthews and his wife, a case that is pending before Common Pleas Judge Janet Burnside.