By Lona O'Connor and Susan R. Miller
Palm Beach Post [Florida]
October 7, 2006
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcsouth/content/local_news/epaper/2006/10/07/m1a_shag_1007.html
Two priests accused of misappropriating millions from a Delray Beach Catholic church formed a for-profit company with a third priest whose personal life also was troubled.
The corporation, which they named SHAG Inc., invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a failed mortgage-loan scheme, records show. Formed in 1984, SHAG dissolved in 2004.
The Revs. John A. Skehan and Francis B. Guinan were accused last week of diverting $8.7 million from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church. Along with financial charges, the police report outlines allegations of heavy drinking, gambling trips, collections of rare coins and romantic affairs for the two men, whose priest duties have been suspended by the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach.
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| The Revs. Francis Guinan (left) and John A. Skehan |
Their friend and the third partner in SHAG, Michael Hickey, a priest assigned to several parishes in Southwest and Central Florida, had a long history of drunken driving. Hickey racked up five DUI convictions between 1979 and 1999 in Collier, Sarasota and Lee counties, records show. His driver license was revoked permanently in 1999.
Upon arriving at St. Vincent in 2003, Guinan allegedly stalled a routine audit of the parish finances for eight months, arousing suspicions at the diocese and ultimately exposing Skehan, who is accused of misappropriating millions during his 40 years as pastor of St. Vincent.
Skehan and Guinan have been charged with grand theft. Skehan is free on $40,000 bond; Guinan is vacationing in Australia, and authorities are negotiating with his attorney, David Roth, to turn himself in to Florida authorities.
Guinan was SHAG's president, Skehan was a director and Hickey was vice president, according to state records. The address listed on state records for SHAG was the same as St. Patrick Church near Palm Beach Gardens, where Guinan was pastor for 16 years.
SHAG appears to be an acronym made up of the first letter of the priests' last names: Skehan, Hickey and Guinan.
"It's pretty unusual for priests to form for-profit corporations, however because diocesan priests do not take a vow of poverty, there is no rule to prevent diocesan priests from accumulating wealth as long as it is within legal and moral confines," Palm Beach Diocese spokeswoman Alexis Walkenstein wrote in an e-mailed response to questions.
"I am not going to comment on the SHAG corporation because that entity was not part of the Diocese of Palm Beach," she wrote.
SHAG's financial ventures had mixed results at best. In the early 1990s, Guinan and his associates invested a total of $177,000 with St. Patrick parishioner William Cartwright, a mortgage broker who counted Guinan as his spiritual adviser.
Of the $177,000, Guinan's contribution was $86,000, with $91,000 contributed by SHAG; another $60,000 came from a woman believed to be Guinan's former housekeeper.
Cartwright's scheme involved making loans based on mortgages, with investors dividing the returns. The money ran out, and Cartwright and his wife, Marilyn, declared bankruptcy in 1991. In their bankruptcy case filings, the Cartwrights listed their address as being on St. Patrick property.
Cartwright's case overlapped the ill-fated Downtown/Uptown development project, which Cartwright loaned $1 million in 1989.
But Downtown/Uptown stopped making payments on the mortgage, cutting into Cartwright's cash flow and ultimately dooming his investment scheme.
In 1993, Cartwright was sentenced to seven years in prison and 40 years' probation for bilking clients of more than $2 million.
When Cartwright's bankruptcy case was resolved, some investors received about 50 cents on the dollar, according to a source. It is unclear whether Guinan or SHAG ever saw any of the money that was returned to creditors.
A small group of St. Patrick parishioners discovered SHAG's connection to the Cartwright fiasco when, suspicious of Guinan's handling of their church's finances, they conducted their own investigation in the early 1990s. They confronted Guinan, who angrily denied them access to parish financial records.
After a year, they took their case to diocesan officials, who conducted an audit but determined that Guinan had done nothing irregular.
When he was transferred from St. Patrick to St. Vincent Ferrer in 2003, the diocese conducted another routine audit of St. Patrick finances. His successor described the finances as "a mess" and installed new financial accountability measures at the parish.
Whether the money for the investments came from St. Vincent may never become publicly known. Police are not probing further back than five years because of the statute of limitations. Delray Beach police did not respond to questions about SHAG on Friday.
But the diocese is not bound by such limitations. "The diocese will be seeking full restitution from Skehan and Guinan for any funds that can be established to have been misappropriated by them," Walkenstein wrote.
An acquaintance who asked not to be named described Hickey as a longtime drinking buddy of Guinan's, witty and personable, like Guinan and Skehan.
Hickey's life intersected off and on with Guinan's and Skehan's over the years.
Hickey, now 71, spent a number of years assigned to Florida's Diocese of Venice before he retired in 2004. He worked in Naples, Arcadia, Immokalee and Miami.
While in Arcadia in 1987, as a priest at St. Paul Catholic Church, Hickey was one of those who stood up for the Ray family, whose three young sons had been infected with the AIDS virus during transfusions and whose house was burned down.
"The ultimate tragedy is to make them (the Rays) feel outlawed and unwanted," Hickey was quoted as saying in a sermon. "People need to stand by them. They need to look into their own hearts."
For about a month, between December 1998 and January 1999, he listed his address at a Palm Beach Gardens house that Guinan owned, according to records. Later, between November 1999 and June 2001, he listed that same address, though by then the owner was different.
From 2001 to 2004, Hickey owned a home in Palm Beach Gardens.
During those years, he was assisting as a visiting priest at St. Patrick Church with the permission of the Palm Beach Diocese, according to spokeswoman Walkenstein.
The chancellor of the Diocese of Venice had no further information on his whereabouts. One of Hickey's former parishioners heard that Hickey might have returned to Ireland, the birthplace of Skehan and Guinan.
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