By Susan Spencer-Wendel
Palm Beach Post
February 18, 2009
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/02/18/0218priest.html
WEST PALM BEACH — Two bookkeepers at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach quit in disgust, suspecting the Rev. Francis Guinan of skimming cash from the church's offering, they testified Wednesday in the grand theft case against the 66-year-old priest.
Apple Woo and Renee Wardrip said they noticed discrepancies in the amount of cash collected and deposited into the church's accounts.
Woo, a Hong Kong native, was near tears as she read from a letter she wrote to Guinan, telling him that she would no longer participate in the collection and counting procedures and that she realized they were not following the Diocese of Palm Beach's rules. Her intention was to work in a church to serve God, a God she believed in, she cried.
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| The Rev. Francis Guinan is accused of stealing $488,000 from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach to fund a lavish lifestyle. Photo by Lannis Waters |
"He said, 'This is crap,' " Woo testified, referring to the letter. "I was even more sad."
Woo, a bookkeeper at the church for several months, cited two instances where Guinan took cash totaling $4,000 and $9,000.
"I questioned myself," Woo said. "What did I get myself into?"
Wardrip had worked at the church since 1991. She testified about shredding accounting records and about a mega-payment to Guinan, never reported to the Diocese of Palm Beach. Guinan received between $45,000 and $50,000 when he took over as pastor at St. Vincent in 2003 from the Rev. John Skehan.
"We didn't report things to the diocese; we just didn't," Wardrip said. "It was not on the books of the church."
A spokeswoman for the diocese, seated in the courtroom, appeared to grimace.
Wardrip said she quit the bookkeeping job in 2004.
"I was very stressed out and things just were not good and I couldn't continue to do what they were doing," she said. "And no one was doing anything about it. I was very frustrated."
Why were you frustrated, asked Assistant State Attorney Mike Rachel.
"By the fact I thought somebody was stealing money," she said.
Earlier in the day, Colleen Head, a longtime staff member at the church who was raised there, took the stand. Head testified that Guinan returned the offertory cash to her with money missing - $4,600 on one occasion. And after the Easter 2005 offering, Guinan returned the cash donation envelopes to her empty.
She spoke of the luxurious upgrades to Guinan's parish residence that she wondered about and parishioners complained about: the Waterford chandelier, flat-screen TVs, a steam bath, granite countertops.
The first full day of testimony in Guinan's trial provided an extraordinary look at the lax accounting in the parish. Testimony before Circuit Judge Krista Marx resumes this morning.
For hours Wednesday, prosecutors kept the diocese's chief financial officer, Denis Hamel, on the stand, going line by line through Guinan's American Express card expenses and checks paid out of church accounts. The documents showed money spent on luxury casino hotels in Las Vegas and the Bahamas and thousands paid to a woman who accompanied Guinan on the casino trips.
None of these expenditures, Hamel said, constituted church business.
At one point, Assistant State Attorney Preston Mighdoll asked Hamel to read the notation on a $2,000 check.
"Balance - patio furniture," Hamel said with a sigh.
But defense attorney Richard Barlow scored some points cross-examining the witnesses.
He established that priests had absolute discretion to spend $50,000 without diocese approval and there was no written policy governing how it was spent.
Barlow also is emphasizing the vast amount of cash bonuses paid out to employees and staff by priests. Head testified she made more than $3,000 a year in bonuses and knew of many others who received them as well.
"There's no IRS in the room," Barlow said, looking back into the courtroom gallery. He then asked whether she reported that income.
"No," Head answered.
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