BishopAccountability.org
	'It's a Betrayal of Trust' Archdiocese Fighting Back against Embezzlers By Cathleen Falsani Daily Southtown October 22, 2006 http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/106320,2NWS5-22.article While not as physically traumatizing as being robbed at gunpoint, when large sums are stolen from a church treasury by a pastor or staff member, the wounds of broken trust are deep. The Rev. Mark Sorvillo, former pastor of Chicago's St. Margaret Mary Church, is charged with embezzling more than $190,000 from his North Side parish -- the sixth priest or employee in the last 18 months to face charges of stealing from Catholic churches or institutions. Among them was Dennis Composto, former comptroller of the Chicago Archdiocese's St. Joseph College Seminary, who on Oct. 11 was placed on two years' probation and ordered to pay $300,000 in restitution by a Cook County judge. The six incidents -- involving alleged thefts ranging from $96,000 to more than $2 million -- represent a tiny fraction of the Catholic institutions in the archdiocese, with its 370 parishes in Cook and Lake counties. Nevertheless, the archdiocese is fighting back against financial malfeasance from the collection plates to the board rooms. "We have to make sure this doesn't happen. It's a betrayal of trust," Cardinal Francis George said in an interview before Sorvillo was charged with felony theft. Part of the archdiocese's strategy was setting up an anonymous "hot line" last year for reports of suspected financial misconduct in Catholic parishes and other institutions. "Will it ever happen again? Probably," George said of financial hanky-panky in parishes. "Will we know it much more quickly? Yes." In its first year, nearly 30 tips have come in through the hot line, said the Rev. Raymond Baumhart, former president of Loyola University, a business ethicist and personal consultant to the cardinal. Of those, about half were nonsense, Baumhart said, and the other half received some follow-up. The archdiocese began investigating Sorvillo after members of the St. Margaret Mary parish finance committee alerted archdiocesan officials about his possible financial misconduct, an archdiocesan spokeswoman said. Unlike many dioceses around the nation, the Chicago Archdiocese has an elaborate program of financial "best practices" that covers everything from how financial reports should be prepared by pastors to how Sunday collections should be handled -- always with two people counting, with the counting pairs rotated periodically and collections put in a tamper-proof marked bag. Tom Brennan, financial director of the Chicago Archdiocese, said it is viewed as something of a vanguard in terms of handling financial misconduct. It has published its annual financial report since the 1970s and, for the last few years, has posted the entire annual report on its Web site, www.archchicago.org. A September 2005 Forbes magazine article about the financial crisis in the Catholic Church cited Chicago's best-practices program as a model for other dioceses. Even with strong guidelines in place, not everyone will follow them, Baumhart said. "A lot of churchgoers are very trusting, including pastors. ... They know a parishioner, and he seems like a nice guy and comes to church and volunteers to count the collection -- wasn't that nice of him?" Baumhart said, sarcastically. Why would a priest steal from his own flock? "Theologically? Two words: Original sin," he said. And for a few priests, who in the Chicago Archdiocese earn a salary of about $25,000 a year, the temptation of all that cash is too great to resist, Baumhart said, adding that there's even a theological term for such thievery. "It's called 'occult compensation,' taking money from your employer because you think you're unfairly compensated," he said. "Evening the books. That's not a new thought."
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