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Financial Transparency Emerges as Major Theme in St. Paul-Minneapolis Abuse Story: Outstanding MPR Report (and Nicole Sotelo on Knights of Columbus)
William D. Lindsey
To my mind, one of the strangest claims that apologists for the Catholic hierarchy who want to assist the hierarchy by bashing survivors of clerical sexual abuse make is that the Catholic church is and always has been transparent in its handling of finances. This claim is so obviously counterintuitive that I can’t quite fathom the reasons some apologists try to trot it out as a weapon against survivors and those who stand in solidarity with survivors.
For Minnesota Public Radio, Tom Scheck has just produced a first-rate, must-read article detailing how the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has dealt with the donations of lay Catholics and with its other financial assets for some time now. The picture is far from pretty.
Using internal financial reports of the archdiocese detailing large transactions never disclosed to those outside certain secret internal loops, Scheck shows the archdiocese spending “nearly $11 million from 2002 to 2011 — about 3 percent of overall archdiocese revenues in those years — for costs tied to clergy misconduct under Flynn and his successor, Archbishop John Nienstedt.” As Scheck notes, these hidden financial reports “detail a stealth financial system that included payments to persuade priests to leave active ministry, financial support for children fathered by priests and money for legal settlements.”
As an example of how the system worked, Scheck points to the case of Father Stanley Kozlak, whom archdiocesan officials decided to pay off in secret after Kozlak fathered a child in 2000–to pay him off in secret as he was removed from ministry in a way designed to hide the reason for his removal. Scheck reports that
Archbishop Harry Flynn agreed in 2002 to pay the fallen priest $1,900 a month “disability” for life, plus $800 a month in rent for life, and $980 a month “to replace the social security payment until Father Kozlak reaches age 67 when he would receive his full social security.”
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