Did Missouri’s taxpayers foot the bill for an out-of-state sex offending priest?

UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on November 29, 2015

You bet they did.

A wealthy Minnesota Catholic religious order and a Catholic-owned rehabilitation hospital engaged in potential Missouri Medicaid insurance fraud to get free health care for a sex-offending priest, a newly released document shows.

The 2014 document, released as a part of a legal settlement against the Benedictines of Minnesota and sex-offending priests, show that the order withheld money from a priest in their employ—so that he would seem indigent and his health care would be paid for by the State of Missouri.

The document is stamped OSB McDONALD-OO861. It is page 420 of the pdf at the link.

The priest, Fr. Finian McDonald, admitted to having more than 200 sex “partners,” including his college-age counseling clients, high schoolers, sex trafficked children in South East Asia, and other adults.

He was sent to a church-operated center for sex-offending clerics in Dittmer, Missouri in 2012. He became ill in 2014 and was sent to Price Memorial, a nursing home run by Franciscan Missionary Brothers in Eureka, MO.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.