Archdiocese Secretly Diverted "Millions" to Problem Priests

MinnPost
January 23, 2014

http://www.minnpost.com/glean/2014/01/archdiocese-secretly-diverted-millions-problem-priests


Tom Scheck and a team of reporters at MPR reveal: “The Rev. Stanley Kozlak served nearly three decades in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. But then he fathered a child and the archdiocese needed him gone. Removing Kozlak quietly wouldn't be cheap, but church leaders knew how to move money discreetly. … Kozlak's package was part of a secret financial system that let archdiocese leaders divert millions of dollars away from traditional church work to deal with clergy misconduct.” So in other words, being a problem priest for the archdiocese was a ticket to retirement security.

Also at MPR, Tim Nelson’s story on the death of an inmate at the St. Peter state hospital says: “St. Peter police are investigating the incident. They were called to the hospital shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday night and found 41-year-old Michael Douglas mortally injured in his room, Chief Matthew Peters said. ... Police arrested a 31-year-old patient at the hospital for murder, and took him to the Nicollet County jail.”

For the Strib, Paul McEnroe says: “All that is known about the 31-year-old suspect, who has yet to be charged, is that he lived at one time in Bemidji, has a violent criminal history and was transferred to the hospital about six weeks ago, according to the sources and court records. That history includes him admitting in federal court that in 2001 he kicked in the door of a home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation and bashed a man in the head with a metal pipe, leaving him unconscious.”

Adam Belz at the Strib says: “Minnesota employers added 9,500 jobs in December, the state reported Thursday, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.6 percent.The December job gains combined with November figures that were revised upward by 1,700 jobs bring total job growth in Minnesota to 45,900 in the past year, a growth rate of 1.7 percent that’s slightly ahead of the national rate of 1.6 percent, according to figures released by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.” Joe Kimball has MinnPost coverage here.

Related, somehow … Dee DePass of the Strib reports: “ATV and snowmobile maker Arctic Cat missed earnings and sales targets for its third quarter, prompting a negative reaction from investors who pummeled the stock down 13 percent Thursday morning. The company also lowered its full-year outlook but said they expect the fourth quarter to remain solid.” Duh … it’s too cold for snowmobiling.

Data analytics techie Tim White has a good commentary in The New York Times. On the near impossibility of assessing dangerous anamolies in all the data the average corporation collects, he says: “The solution lies in finding a way to examine the data so that analysts can quickly identify suspicious patterns. Instead of programs to generate more data, we need different tools to understand them. And it turns out that the best tools are right in our heads: our eyes.”

As you may know, Target’s foray into Canada hasn’t gone well. Susan Berfield at Bloomberg says: “In an e-mail to some of its Canadian customers sent Monday, Target said its investigation found that Canadians who crossed the border to shop in the U.S. between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15 could have had their personal information stolen. … But here’s a question: Why were all those Canadians shopping at Target in the U.S. when Target just opened all those stores?” Ms. Berfield surely meant to say “Canadian guests.”

Seriously tough gals … Emily Gurnon in the PiPress says: “Two brutal knife attacks sent two St. Paul men to Regions Hospital on Saturday in assaults by their girlfriends, police say. In both cases, children were present in the homes. … according to the complaint, filed Wednesday in Ramsey County District Court. It alleges: Melissa Ann Kubiszewski, 49, was angry because her boyfriend of seven or eight years had called her 12-year-old son a n----, she told police. ‘Sure, I'm going to defend my son,’ she said. Her boyfriend, identified as T.J.B., also was ‘jumping in my face, talking mean,’ she told police.”

The potential for so many cheap jokes is just too much … Jeff Glaze and Steve Verburg of the Wisconsin State Journal report: “For the second time in two months, a short section of above-ground pipe burst at a biodigester near Waunakee, discharging thousands of gallons of animal waste. … As livestock operations in Wisconsin continued to grow in 2013, about 1 million gallons of manure was spilled, more than in any year since 2007, state Department of Natural Resources records show. The DNR responds to about 50 spills each year.”