On the day the Vatican accepted the resignation of Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland, Milwaukee’s district attorney said Friday he was opening a probe into the $450,000 settlement paid from church funds to a man who accused Weakland of sexual abuse.
The prosecutor, E. Michael McCann, said he has asked the archdiocese of Milwaukee for documents about the 1998 payment and will consider appointing a special prosecutor on the matter in the future because he knows the archbishop.
Among key questions McCann said he wants answered: “Where did these funds come from? Who was the authority who made [the decision to disburse the funds]? Was it through the usual channels?” Another government agency, which McCann declined to name, also will review the documents once the church provides them, he said.
Suddenly at the center of the church sex abuse scandal that has troubled the U.S. Catholic Church for months, Milwaukee archdiocese officials publicly defended their financial practices and the controversial settlement with Paul Marcoux, who accused Weakland of “date rape” 20 years ago. Weakland, who has denied any claim of “abuse,” was in seclusion in his residence, feeling “remorseful,” his spokesman said, “for the strain and stress put on the archdiocese.”
Spokesman Jerry Topczewski said the $450,000 had come not from the collection basket, but from investment income and church rental properties, part of the archdiocese’s approximately $30 million annual budget.
“Nothing was done out of the ordinary in processing the settlement,” said Topczewski, who added that the church books are audited annually, most recently by Arthur Andersen. “The money was legitimately paid out.”
That did not satisfy some of the region’s more than 600,000 Roman Catholic parishioners, who said they were disturbed to learn this week where almost half a million dollars in church money had gone.
Use of funds questioned
“There are a lot of homeless, people who are unemployed, people who need food and clothing,” said Virginia Coronado, a Milwaukee woman who works for a non-profit social service agency that gets some funds from the Catholic Church. “Can you imagine all the stuff they could have done here for the children?”
Topczewski acknowledged that the money “could have gone in a number of different areas,” but also said nothing had been “cut from the budget” to pay the settlement.
Four church leaders, including a diocesan lawyer, finance officer, Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Sklba and Weakland knew about the $450,000 settlement when it was made, Topczewski said. Sklba took leadership of the archdiocese on Friday until an interim administrator is picked.
The Vatican had not known about the payment previously, nor should they have, Topczewski said. “The people who needed to know and were authorized to issue a check did,” he said. “There was no need for anyone else to know.”
Financial oversight required
Canon law requires that the finances of every diocese be overseen by a finance council of at least three people, appointed by the bishop, with expertise in finance or law. How precisely that council oversees everyday spending, though, can vary significantly, church experts said.
“There’s very little accountability,” said Peter Isely, the Milwaukee representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “At best, this is professional misconduct by the top religious leader of the archdiocese. Whenever a bishop spends church money, he does that on the behalf of everybody. It’s not his money.”
Adding to the entanglements in the situation, Weakland reportedly contacted McCann, the prosecutor, several years ago, when Marcoux was first threatening to sue Weakland. Weakland told the prosecutor of a compromising relationship, but not an assault, McCann told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday.
Citing the newly opened investigation, McCann declined to comment Friday on what he knew about the sexual allegations or about the settlement before they were made public on Thursday, but stressed that he planned to appoint an outside prosecutor if necessary because of his acquaintance with the former archbishop.
Weakland to apologize
Through his spokesman, Weakland, 75, said he plans to make a public apology, but no time or place was set. Weakland, a leading liberal force among church leaders in this country, will miss a meeting next month in which the U.S. bishops plan to address how to protect the church from sexual abuse by priests.
Howard Eisenberg, a Marquette University Law School dean who had chaired a commission on the issue for Weakland, was in a Milwaukee hospital on Friday after suffering a “mild” heart attack a day earlier, university officials said. Earlier Thursday, Eisenberg had expressed outrage at Weakland for the seeming contradiction between Weakland’s public statements and the sex abuse allegation.
Bishops to draw up rules
During their June meeting in Dallas, the bishops may establish a national office to help dioceses around the country deal with cases, one bishop said on Friday. Bishop George Niederauer of Salt Lake City is a member of a committee assigned to come up with standards to present to the bishops in Dallas.
Meanwhile, in New York City on Friday, a high-ranking priest was removed from active duty after an allegation of an “improper relationship with a minor,” the archdiocese there said. Monsignor Charles Kavanagh, who is in charge of fundraising for the archdiocese of New York, allegedly had the relationship about 20 years ago, when he was assigned to the Cathedral Preparatory Seminary, said Joseph Zwilling, an archdiocese spokesman.
