By Stephanie Slater
Palm Beach Post
October 21, 2006
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcsouth/content/local_news/epaper/2006/10/21/m1a_DBCHURCH_1021.html
Delray Beach — The Rev. Francis Guinan took his girlfriend to Las Vegas nearly a dozen times, often staying at the Monte Carlo Resort Hotel & Casino where he would receive special room rates because he was a "high roller," documents show.
They traveled together quite a bit - relaxing at a spa in Athens, Ga., taking her son to Ireland and staying at the swanky Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas in November 2004 with the Rev. John Skehan, his cohort who already has been charged with stealing more than $100,000 from the church both led.
Guinan usually put the expenses on his card - an American Express Platinum credit card paid with money put in the offering plate at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach.
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| Former Delray priests Francis Guinan (left) and John A. Skehan are accused of misappropriating $8.6 million from their church. |
Guinan's lavish lifestyle is detailed in hundreds of pages of investigative documents obtained by The Palm Beach Post.
Though authorities issued a warrant for his arrest last month, Guinan, 63, has been vacationing in Australia.
He is expected to turn himself in to authorities next week.
Skehan, 79, was arrested Sept. 27 at Palm Beach International Airport on a return flight from Ireland. Skehan pleaded not guilty Wednesday and is out of jail on $40,000 bond.
Both former pastors are accused of misappropriating $8.6 million from St. Vincent during the past four decades.
Both are suspected of other moral failures.
Guinan and Carol Hagen became intimate while she worked as a bookkeeper at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Palm Beach Gardens where Guinan was pastor from 1987 to 2003. Hagen, 50, was divorced in 1994, records show.
It was "no great love affair, trust me," Hagen told investigators of her relationship with Guinan in the mid-1990s.
Parishioners at St. Patrick suspected Guinan was mismanaging funds and tried to get diocesan officials to investigate.
Then-Bishop Keith Symons and his financial officer backed Guinan and told the parishioners to drop the matter or they would be considered the ones in the wrong.
Hagen, however, told detectives investigating the St. Vincent thefts that she watched Guinan take money from St. Patrick many times.
He ordered his staff to give it to him.
And he'd store the cash in a safe in his room at the church, she said.
Often he spent it on her - buying her a new refrigerator, giving her a $5,000 holiday bonus and paying her son's parochial school tuition from sixth grade on through graduation.
Hagen was fired from St. Patrick in December 2003, three months after Guinan left to succeed Skehan as pastor at St. Vincent. Hagen believed she was fired because she did not deduct her son's medical insurance cost from her pay.
Diocese Chief Financial Officer Denis Hamel told investigators it was due to her poor performance.
An internal audit of St. Patrick finances after Guinan left uncovered several inaccuracies in the reporting of cash and checks, Hamel said.
Guinan thought Hagen deserved a severance package and paid her $43,000 from a St. Vincent "slush fund," records show.
Then there was the money Guinan spent on other women.
He paid school tuition expenses for another church employee's son and took the former housekeeper at St. Patrick to Las Vegas in April 2004 - the same time the diocese was conducting an internal audit of St. Vincent finances, records show.
Guinan did not return a message left on his cellphone Friday. His attorney, David Roth, also did not return a call for comment.
Shared financial habits
While Guinan was reportedly mishandling money at St. Patrick, his longtime friend Skehan was doing the same at St. Vincent, where he became pastor in 1963.
Skehan and Guinan once loaded up a limo with longtime church employee Colleen Head, her husband and parents and church bookkeeper Renee Wardrip and drove to Joe's Stone Crab in Miami Beach for dinner and then hit another bar before returning home.
Head was loyal to Skehan, refusing to help the diocese with the investigation, records show. Skehan told her he was proud of her and that the diocese was corrupt. He also offered to pay her legal fees "if ever needed."
Skehan also had help from bookkeeper Wardrip, who followed his orders and kept a second set of books specifically for the purpose of hiding cash from the diocese.
It was common knowledge among bookkeepers that priests kept hidden bank accounts, Wardrip told investigators, adding that she attended semi-annual bookkeeping training taught by the diocese.
The bookkeepers, however, never openly talked about the slush funds.
They were terrified of losing their jobs, Wardrip said, and a friend of hers was fired as bookkeeper at another church when she complained to the diocese about a priest taking money from the offertory.
Her friend's husband was fired as well, Wardrip said.
Parish bookkeepers are expected to attend a spring and fall workshop that deals in part with accounting and financial reporting practices, said diocese spokeswoman Alexis Walkenstein.
According to the diocese's description of the job, a bookkeeper prepares the payroll and associated taxes and reports, prepares bank deposits and records receipts, prepares vouchers including coding and payment of outstanding invoices, reconciles parish books, and prepares financial statements as requested.
They must have bookkeeping, computer and organizational skills, and they must maintain confidentiality.
Despite her training, Wardrip said she did not believe she was doing anything illegal because most of the accounts she deposited money into had either the church's name or a church-related name, such as St. Vincent Ferrer Church Holy Name Society.
Skehan paid her son's freshman year tuition to Pope John Paul II High School in Boca Raton with money from the "Holy Name Society" fund, records show.
It wasn't until Guinan became pastor that Wardrip said she took issue with the church's finances.
While Skehan made sure that there was enough money in the church's operating accounts to pay the bills, Guinan would go months without giving them any cash to deposit.
He'd write himself $7,000 checks and order Wardrip to shred financial records, records show.
In spring 2004, Guinan told Wardrip to write a letter to a casino in the Bahamas requesting that his room bill be complimentary because he was a high roller, records show.
A month before Wardrip resigned as bookkeeper in November 2004, she told Skehan that she suspected Guinan was stealing money from the church.
Skehan told her not to worry, the church had plenty of money.
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