NEW JERSEY
The Record
SUNDAY, MARCH 9, 2014
BY LESLIE BRODY
STAFF WRITER
Reports that Archbishop John J. Myers was enhancing his retirement home at the expense of the archdiocese has outraged some parents who were already fuming about his plan to take over the financial operations of Catholic elementary schools.
The details of Myers’ half-million-dollar expansion showed that church leadership “was not a trustworthy steward of our hard-earned treasure,” said one mother whose children attend a parochial school in Bergen County.
The archdiocese has been pushing a campaign called Lighting the Way to exert more authority over roughly 70 parish schools in Bergen, Hudson, Essex and Union counties, starting in July.
Pastors whose parishes have elementary schools were urged to sign contracts in recent months that would give the archdiocese much more control over school budgets, hiring and curriculum than it had in the past.
Indeed, the central office in Newark will start to process bills for the schools using their tuition accounts.
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