Word: barbarito
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...Vincent's pastor, the Rev. John Skehan, diocesan accountant Denis Hamel dutifully showed up to inspect the books and the procedures for counting Sunday collections. The new pastor, the Rev. Francis Guinan--a close buddy of Skehan's--told him to beat it. But the new bishop, Gerald Barbarito, eventually ordered Guinan to comply--and by Easter 2005, after parish staff had come forward with what they knew about St. Vincent's slippery bookkeeping, Hamel was left dumbfounded. "I called the bishop," says Hamel, now the diocese's financial administrator, "and I told him we had a tiger...
...diverted St. Vincent collection money to secret slush-fund accounts while living as hedonistically as Renaissance Popes. The police report says Skehan, 79, gave a "girlfriend" $134,000, made a rare-coins purchase for $275,000 and owned an oceanfront condominium worth $455,000. It says Guinan, 63, whom Barbarito removed as St. Vincent's pastor in 2005, spent his take on expensive vacations to Las Vegas and the Bahamas; a $220,000 renovation of his parish residence; and payments to his own "paramour," the bookkeeper of his former parish, whom he gave $47,000 for credit-card bills...
...abuse crisis, many are asking, Where are the bishops? Barbarito was sent to Palm Beach in 2003 to fix a diocese already reeling from the departure of two of his predecessors under sexual-abuse accusations--one of whom had also dismissed reports of financial misconduct against Guinan at another parish in the 1990s. Following the St. Vincent discovery in 2005, Barbarito decreed biennial audits for every Palm Beach parish. But only a handful of other U.S. dioceses are cracking down. Chicago recently set up a hotline to report malfeasance, and St. Louis is creating a centralized bookkeeping system...
...left to Catholic laity. The sex-abuse litigation "forced church documents like parish audits into the open for the first time ever," says McKiernan, emboldening more lay scrutiny. After Barbarito began a probe into the St. Vincent mess, an anonymous parishioner sent a letter to the Palm Beach County state attorney. That made it harder for witnesses to keep the case "a secret within the church," as the letter said--despite the efforts of Skehan, who had allegedly sent Christmas cards to church secretaries with $1,500 each and an oily thank-you for not cooperating with diocese investigators...
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