High-Rolling Cleric Took Girlfriend on Gambling Holidays
By Jason O'Brien
Irish Independent
October 24, 2006
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=30&si=1711135&issue_id=14798
One of the two Irish priests accused of stealing $8.6m (€6.85m) from a church in Florida regularly took his girlfriend on gambling trips to Las Vegas.
And Fr Francis Guinan asked for - and received - special room rates at top hotels in Vegas because he was considered such a "high roller".
Police reports reveal Fr Guinan (63), from outside Birr in Co Offaly, also brought the woman and her son to Ireland on holiday, while other trips together included a spa weekend in Georgia.
 |
| Fr John Skehan (right) and Fr Francis Guinan; Fr Guinan is said to have taken his girlfriend to Las Vega |
The pair even travelled to the Bahamas in November 2004 with Fr John Skehan, the other priest involved in the scandal.
Fr Guinan usually put his expenses on his credit card which it is claimed was paid with money from the plate collection at Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach.
A warrant for Fr Guinan's arrest was issued last month by authorities in Florida but he is understood to be on a cruise ship in Australia.
Reports in Florida say he is due to hand himself in next week - after spending a few days in South East Asia on his way back to America.
Fr Skehan (79) who is from Johnstown in Co Kilkenny, was arrested four weeks ago and has been charged with stealing money from the church.
He pleaded not guilty and is currently free on bail of $40,000. The two men are accused of misappropriating $8.6m from St Vincent's over the past four decades.
Fr Guinan had previously worked at St Patrick Catholic Church in Palm Beach where he become intimate with the bookkeeper at the church, Carol Hagen.
It was "no great love affair, trust me", Hagen told investigators of her relationship with Guinan in the mid-1990s. But she added that she watched Guinan take money from St Patrick's many times.
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.
Ms Hagen was fired from St Patrick's in December 2003, three months after Fr Guinan left to succeed Fr Skehan at St Vincent's, with her "poor performance" given as the reason from the church.
However, Fr Guinan thought Ms Hagen deserved a pay-off and paid her $43,000 from a St Vincent's "lush fund", the investigative documents show.
At St Vincent's, bookkeeper Renee Waidrip has revealed that Fr Guinan did not stick to the rules that had served Fr Skehan for so long. While Fr Skehan made sure that there was enough money in the church's accounts to pay the bills, Fr Guinan would go months without handing over any cash.
In Spring 2004, he told Ms Waidrip to write a letter to a casino in the Bahamas requesting his room bill be complimentary because he was a high roller.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.