KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
June 6, 2019
by Peter Feuerherd
A thousand dollars a month in liquor. Daily fresh flowers delivered to the diocesan office, costing up to $182,000 over 13 years, and $350,000 in gifts to priests, bishops and cardinals spread around the country and at the Vatican.
While Bishop Michael Bransfield led the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, with its reputation as a poor, isolated church, it’s the details of high living that spring out from an investigative report, details of which were published by The Washington Post June 5.
The report, directed by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, describes Bransfield ordering $4.6 million of renovations on his house in Wheeling and conducting a regular pattern of sexual harassment of seminarians and priests under his authority.
In a letter June 5 to the people of the diocese, Lori said that the report found that the accusations of sexual harassment were credible but did not involve minors. The investigators discovered that Bransfield tapped diocesan funds to pay for an opulent lifestyle that included paying for drug and alcohol abuse and extensive leisure travel.
“There is no excuse, nor adequate explanation, that will satisfy the troubling question of how his behavior was allowed to continue for as long as it did,” Lori wrote. In the letter, Lori acknowledged being a recipient of $7,500 in gifts from Bransfield, money which he said would be donated to Catholic Charities. He also said that Bransfield’s Wheeling house will be sold with the proceeds used to support sex abuse survivors.
As the U.S. bishops meet in Baltimore June 11-14, they are expected to vote on a “metropolitan” plan to discipline transgressing bishops. A vote on that plan, which calls upon archbishops to discipline wayward bishops with the assistance of lay review boards, is a crucial part of the agenda. Lori’s investigation is seen as a model of how that could work in practice.
Bishops who also received money that came from Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston funds included Cardinal Donald Wuerl ($10,000), Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Cardinal Raymond Burke, former papal nuncio Cardinal Carlo Maria Vigano and Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who received $29,000 to help renovate his Vatican residence. The late Cardinal Bernard Law also received $4,800.
The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston benefitted from the proceeds of oil extracted from Texas property it was bequeathed in the early 20th century. The diocesan endowment, according to the Post, is valued at $230 million. Bransfield, according to the report, would be reimbursed with increases to his salary to pay for the gifts.
Until the Post story was released, details about Lori’s report were held in confidence. In comments on the Post story, Lori said that it was unfair to release the names of the recipients of Bransfield’s gifts, since they were unaware of his questionable financial activities.
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