Ongoing Archdiocese Fire Sale Exposes 19-year-old Cover-up of Cardinal Bevilacqua's Lavish Spending

By Ralph Cipriano
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
June 28, 2012

http://www.priestabusetrial.com/2012/06/ongoing-archdiocese-fire-sale-exposes.html

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is holding a fire sale after running up $11.6 million in legal bills in the fiscal year prior to the priest abuse trial. Facing a $17 million operating deficit, the archdiocese is now selling off the cardinal's mansion on City Line Avenue, and closing down the 117-year-old archdiocese newspaper, The Catholic Standard & Times.

The latest victim of the church's austerity campaign is Villa St. Joseph-by-the-Sea. The grand summer vacation home where Cardinals Krol and Bevilacqua once entertained wealthy donors will soon be up for sale. It's a three-story brick and stucco oceanfront mansion that covers an entire city block along the boardwalk in Ventnor, N.J., and is assessed at $6.2 million.

The impending sale of the cardinal's seaside villa is not only a sign of the archdiocese's changing fortunes, but it also exposes a fraudulent story told by the cardinal's PR guys 19 years ago to get His Eminence out of a public relations jam over the villa. It's an amusing saga.

It should surprise nobody that a cardinal who in 1994 would order the shredding of a list of 35 abuser priests then in ministry a year earlier would launch an elaborate and untruthful cover-up of his own lavish spending habits.

But you've got to admire such resourcefulness. To pull off the villa cover-up, the cardinal and his PR guys enlisted the services of a wealthy donor willing to bend the truth, and they also planted a fraudulent article and photo in the archdiocese's own newspaper. Maybe it's a good thing that they're finally closing that house organ. The archdiocese spin machine also apparently manufactured a phony story about a non-existing "reverter clause" on the original deed of sale of the villa to claim that the cardinal couldn't sell the place if he wanted to.

The saga began on June 29, 1993, when a group of 18 protesters held a demonstration at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Using Superglue instead of nails, the protesters attached a list of grievances to the cathedral door that accused the cardinal of betraying the gospel by "willfully neglecting the poor."

The protesters said that at the same time he was closing poor churches and schools in North Philadelphia, the cardinal was redecorating his summer home. Talk about a public relations nightmare. At the time, minority parishioners were picketing the cathedral every week to protest the closings. I was there the day of the Martin Luther-style protest at the cathedral, covering the story as the religion reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Jay Devine, then a church spokesman, defended the archdiocese by saying that besides serving as the cardinal's summer home, the villa was also a summer residence for up to a dozen retired priests. "The place was in fairly deplorable condition and needed that kind of work to accommodate the priests," Devine told the Philadelphia Inquirer on June 30, 1993, in a story that ran under my byline.

Permits on file at Ventnor City Hall showed contractors at the villa in 1993 were doing $118,000 worth of interior renovations, plumbing and electrical work. Tax records listed the archdiocese as the owner of the villa since 1963, with the place then assessed at $1.7 million, and the archdiocese paying annual taxes of $30,249 in 1992.

Nine days later, Devine told the Inquirer, however, that despite tax records listing the property as owned by the archdiocese, the property could not be sold because of a restriction on a deed from a benefactor. Here's what the Inquirer printed on July 9, 1993, in a story under my byline:

The villa was donated in 1963 to the archdiocese by Hannah Gertrude Hogan for use as a residence for retired priests, Devine said. Hogan stipulated in a deed conveyed to then-Archbishop Krol that if the villa were sold, it would revert to its original owners ... No archdiocese monies were used to pay for the improvements, Devine said.

Instead, the money to pay for the improvements came from a $1 million donation from John E. Connolly of Pittsburgh, a wealthy donor who made a fortune on riverboat gambling, Devine maintained.

A few days after the original protest at the cathedral, The Catholic Standard & Times ran a photo of the cardinal accepting an oversized $1 million check from Connelly at the villa. The date of the donation was said to be the same date of the protest. Amazing coincidence, isn't it?

Back to that July 9, 1993 Inquirer story:

On the same day as the protest, Connelly donated the money at a ceremony at Villa St. Joseph-by-the-Sea, located on the boardwalk in Ventnor, the spokesman said earlier this week ...

The Connelly gift is paying for the renovation and maintenance of the villa, which is a summer home for retired priests, said archdiocese spokesman Jay Devine. Cardinal Bevilacqua uses the villa for occasional meetings, and during the summer he takes a two-week vacation with relatives at the Ventnor house, Devine said ...

Connelly said he became "very dear friends with the cardinal when he was bishop of Pittsburgh. In an interview, Connelly said he agreed some time ago to make the donation to the archdiocese ... The work at the shore was done in recent months. Connelly said he donated the money because he deeply admired Catholic priests.

"My love is overwhelming for these men who have given their lives to the church," he said. "I try to make their last days on earth a little bit more relaxing and enjoyable as possible."

Connelly, who bills himself as "America's premiere tour-boat operator," owns 18 river-tour boats and a riverboat gambling casino in Davenport, Iowa.

So what happened to that stipulation in the deed, known as a reverter clause, that supposedly prevented the villa from being sold? The principals can't help. Hannah Gertrude Hogan died in 1976; John E. Connelly in 2009.

Here's how the Inquirer addressed the factual disparity Wednesday in a story written by staff writer Amy S. Rosenberg:

Though the property -- which Hogan bought for $55,000 in 1961 -- was said to have been donated to the archdiocese, its June 2, 1963 deed shows tax stamps indicating a sale price of $100,000, according to the Atlantic County Clerk's Office. It is now one of the highest-asssessed homes in Ventnor.

The deed examined by the reporter indicated a sale to the archdiocese, not a donation. It appeared to be a standard deed that did not contain any unusual stipulation about the property reverting back to its original owners if sold.

On Thursday, an employee in the Atlantic County Clerk's office confirmed that the deed of sale of the property by Hogan to the archdiocese for $100,000 in 1963 did not contain a reverter clause.

According to the Inquirer, the 21,875 square foot house features 19 rooms, 9 bedrooms, a large deck, an elevator, a grand staircase, a marble foyer, and "a spacious back lawn featuring a lily pond, a barbecue and a shrine to the Virgin Mary."

Jay Devine, now a founding partner of his own public relations firm, Devine + Partners, did not respond to an email and a phone call. In Jay's defense, he was probably busy making up new stories. A current archdiocese spokesman, Kenneth Garvin, said it would be difficult for him to comment on something that happened 19 years ago, when he wasn't there.

Meanwhile, court records from a 17-year-old workers' compensation case filed back in 1995 shed more lights on the cardinal's efforts to concoct an alibi to get him out of a public relations jam. The workers' compensation case was filed by a veteran archdiocese employee who worked in close contact with the cardinal. In the claim, the employee, a "devout Catholic," said he suffered "serious mental and physical distress" that left him unable to work as a result of the cardinal's "rude and abusive treatment."

The employee was fired after he suffered a heart attack. Records showed the archdiocese settled the claim by paying the employee $87,500. The employee and his lawyer both say that after the protest, and inquiries from the press, the employee overheard the cardinal lining up the donation from Connelly, but the cardinal wanted to make it look like Connelly had pledged to pay for the renovations before the protest occurred.

In a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation of the employee done by Wolfram Rieger, a Philadelphia psychiatrist, Rieger wrote that the employee was "severely troubled by the close to $1 million in spending at the cardinal's Ventnor shore residence." The document said the cardinal and a friend, the wife of a wealthy developer, had "engaged in a redecorating and remodeling spending spree at the Ventnor home," which the employee was told "by archdiocese sources was close to $1 million."

The document continues:

On June 30, 1993, the Philadelphia Inquirer printed an article that Cardinal Bevilacqua had spent over $118,000 renovating the shore house. [The employee] was severely troubled to see the church engage in a spin control attempt to avoid bad press.

[The employee] was troubled by the church orchestrating a strategy by which the press would be told that a prominent donor, John E. Connolly, had donated the money for the renovations. [The employee] was very troubled by the fact that the newspapers had only discovered $118,000 in renovations when the church had spent over $900,000 and the church was orchestrating a press campaign to cover up the Cardinal's actual spending and making it appear that the spending was only for the benefit of retired priests who were going to use the shore house.

Sometimes it takes a while to get the story right. In this case, it took 19 years.

The cardinal's guys were always trying to spin the narrative about the cardinal's seaside villa. It wasn't the cardinal's vacation home, it was a residence for retired priests. Yeah, right.

The story I always heard was that whenever the big guy wanted the villa, those retired priests were promptly evacuated to another archdiocese-owned beach house a lot less fancy a few blocks away. Everybody got the boot whenever Cardinal Tony wanted the villa, which he often shared with his extended family.