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Denver Newsroom, Jul 18, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- When the coronavirus pandemic necessitated widespread shutdowns, Catholic parishes were among those to feel the financial pinch almost immediately. No people in the pews meant no money in the collection basket. Mass after Mass, weekend after weekend, that loss added up.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Denver, Colorado is one such parish whose already-precarious financial situation was thrown in jeopardy by the pandemic.
To keep paying his small staff, Fr. Joseph Lajoie applied for a Payment Protection Program (PPP) loan through the Small Business Administration. The loans were meant to support the essential needs of small businesses and nonprofits affected by coronavirus shutdowns.
An article from the Associated Press published last week criticized the “U.S. Roman Catholic Church” for reportedly accepting between $1.4-$3.5 billion work of PPP loans. In fact, there is no single entity that is the U.S. Roman Catholic Church. Rather, each parish operates as its own small nonprofit, and weekly donations help to employ the priest, along with the employees who maintain the parish and its ministries.
Sacred Heart Parish has three part-time employees, and a three-ring binder in which it keeps track of its 500-some registered families.
“In some ways our parish is very archaic,” Fr. Jajoie told CNA.
He dreams of someday hiring a maintenance manager.
“I have a 100 year-old church without a maintenance guy,” he noted.
Though it is located in Denver’s gentrifying, “hipster” neighborhood of RiNo (River North), Lajoie said Sacred Heart is a small, poor parish with no online donation portal and has been “limping along” through the pandemic.
When Lajoie applied for the loans, the priest had no grand visions for what he would do with the money.
The needs of the parish are pretty “bare bones,” and Lajoie said he used the loan to keep paying the salaries of his employees – a secretary, a bookkeeper, and a director of religious education – whose incomes help support their families.
Masses are back at the parish now, but at a lower capacity to accommodate social distancing.
“Right now, because of the reduced Mass schedule that we have, we’re just under about 50% of our normal parish income. So we’re limping along, but it could be a lot worse,” Lajoie said.
Fr. Lajoie said by applying for the federal loan, he was not trying to pad his bottom line. He was simply trying to keep his employees, well, employed.
“I wanted to do my best to support these employees, and I would have done it even without the loan, even to the detriment of the parish, because I feel at least we showed them some gratitude” for their work, Lajoie said. “Because being here as a pastor for a year and dealing with the shutdown, I don’t know what I would do (without them). They’re definitely quite essential to the needs of this parish.”
Lajoie said he hoped people understand that parishes are small businesses with employees who pay taxes and need to keep their jobs, and that they are not part of huge corporations.
“Parishes have employees, who are working, who need jobs. As far as my parish is concerned, we are using this money to help some people who are part of families. We are using this money the same way that a for-profit business is using money, which also helps their bottom line. As far as I’m concerned, what we’re doing…it’s to benefit working people, who themselves pay taxes,” he said. “We’re using this to help people the same way that a for-profit helps their employees,” he said.
“I think that more parishes can be trusted to actually care about people in all of this, than some companies out there who are willing to…cut jobs, because they’re not making a profit anymore. I mean, the church will still exist if they’re not making a profit. If the church isn’t making a profit at a certain point, the buildings themselves will have to close because they can’t keep the lights on.”
The parish of Christ the King in Oklahoma City is more than three times the size of Sacred Heart. The parish has 1,800 families, and a school that educates 520 children. Between full-time and part-time employees, Fr. Rick Stansberry said the parish and school employ 78 people.
When the pandemic shut down Masses at the parish, Stansberry said one of the members of his finance committee encouraged him to apply for the PPP loan so that the parish wouldn’t have to fire anyone.
“Once everything was shut down, our collection dropped pretty quick, since people weren’t coming to church,” Stansberry told CNA.
“In our parish, a lot of people are tied into the oil and gas industry, and lots of people were losing jobs. And so all of a sudden they found themselves without jobs, having to feed their families. Some were not able to pay tuition. Obviously they weren’t able to tithe to the church,” he said.
“I didn’t want to have to lay people off and contribute to the problem. And some of our part-time (employees) are more vulnerable in the sense that they really depended on the jobs that they had to eat. I didn’t want to lay people off,” Stansberry said.
The part-time employees “were the ones that were the most grateful that we got the loan.”
The loans granted to parishes as well as other nonprofits and small businesses through the PPP loan could be used for salaries, utilities, rent and other necessities. Stansberry said his parish loan was used “100% for salaries.”
With the recent phased reopenings of Masses, Stansberry said that donations have “kind of stabilized” again, but that the financial situation of the parish and its school is a “moving target” right now, especially with all of the uncertainty surrounding the quickly approaching school year.
The school is working on a 40-page document detailing reopening plans with social distancing and masks and frequent disinfection of the school, which itself “has added thousands of dollars to our janitorial bill.”
But if something changes and reopening becomes impossible, it puts the future of many Catholic schools – and their employees – in jeopardy, Stansberry noted.
“If we can’t reopen in person, I think we’re going to lose a lot of Catholic schools, because parents are saying, ‘Well, why am I going to pay tuition to do virtual (Catholic) school when I can do the public one for free?’”
Stansberry said his parish also has some important ministries, such as those that feed the homeless, or help needy families with food assistance, that would have been cut had the parish not qualified for the PPP loan.
And the priest said he wanted to keep his employees paid and his ministries operational.
“By having this money to pay salaries, we did not have to cut back on the mobile meals program or helping to provide food for a needy family. That would have all had to have been cut too. The people that I think that are being critical (about parishes receiving loans) don’t really know how a church works.”
CNA Staff, Jul 17, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).-
The Diocese of Hong Kong has been targeted by “spear-phishing” operations from the Chinese government, a technology publication is reporting.
According to ZDNet, hackers associated with th… […]
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CNA Staff, Jul 17, 2020 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Jackson has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to improve its financial controls, in a case related to one of its priests who allegedly defrauded parishioners.
The priest, Fr. Lenin Vargas, has been indicted “on ten counts of wire fraud based on alleged fraudulent fundraising activities,” according to a July 13 statement from the office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Fr. Vargas allegedly collected tens of thousands of dollars from parishioners, which he used for personal expenses.
The attorney’s office added that it had “entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement” with the Jackson diocese “based on the alleged inaction of the Diocese, which allegedly contributed to parishioners continuing to donate money to Vargas.”
The DPA will be in effect for 12 months, and upon its successful completion, all charges against the diocese will be dismissed. The prosecutor’s office reminded the public that a DPA and indictment “are not evidence of guilt and that all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
The DPA “includes a number of remedial measures designed to help ensure that there are no future violations such as those alleged in the Affidavit,” the US attorney’s office stated.
The diocese specified July 15 that among the changes it is to undertake and maintain under the DPA are the “return of donations related to alleged fraudulent activities against parishioners”, making staff changes in the accounting and chancery offices, improvements in accounting for donations and priest spending, the formation of a new review board focusing on ethical conduct, establishing a fraud prevention hotline, revising collection policies, and initiating a penal process for Fr. Vargas.
The diocese added that it had already undertaken the enumerated changes during the investigation related to Fr. Vargas, excepting the penal process, which it said “will begin now.”
The prosecutor’s office also noted that the diocese “has reimbursed identified victims of the alleged fraudulent scheme.”
Bishop Joseph Kopacz of Jackson said July 15 that “there are still steps to be taken and certainly more changes ahead. As part of an agreed upon resolution of the federal investigation, the Diocese will welcome periodic review and oversight of its financial and management practices and protocols. As a result of the many steps we have already taken to tighten our internal controls, we are very comfortable with this resolution.”
He expressed “deep regret for all who have been hurt by Lenin Vargas’s actions” and added, “we still invite anyone to come forward with claims, and we will work to seek a just resolution with them.”
Fr. Vargas returned to his home country of Mexico while he was being investigated. The Jackson diocese has said he was barred from public ministry in November 2018, and by November 2019 it said he had been “stripped of his priestly facilities and authorities in the Catholic Church in Mexico were notified of his standing.”
Fr. Vargas was pastor of St. Joseph parish in Starkville, and its mission in Macon, until November 2018. The parish, as well as the chancery, were raided by federal agents that month following questions about Fr. Vargas’ financial activities.
According to the indictment of the priest, he told parishioners he had cancer, when he in fact had been diagnosed with HIV around September 2014. He solicited donations, saying they were to cover cancer treatments and to help build an orphanage and chapel in his home country of Mexico. His alleged scheme to defraud continued from about January 2015 through September 2018.
The indictment says that the money collected by Fr. Vargas was sent to Mexico to enrich himself and Sergio Picon, with whom he had a close personal relationship, as well as business ventures.
In April 2015, Fr. Vargas went to the Toronto-based Southdawn Institute, which treats priests and religious with addiction or mental health problems. He told parishioners it was for cancer treatment.
In a November 2018 statement, the Jackson diocese said that Bishop Kopacz ordered an internal accounting audit of the finances at St. Joseph, and that afterward the diocese placed constraints on Fr. Vargas’ spending. The diocese added that it had demanded that Fr. Vargas stop soliciting charitable donations and that he do no more charitable fundraising without informing it.
A year later, in November 2019, the diocese said that “neither Bishop Joseph Kopacz, nor any Diocesan Official, committed, condoned or covered up fraudulent activity,” and that “no Diocese official had any knowledge that Father Vargas was asking individuals for money until … November 2018.”
It also said that the audit of St. Joseph parish was ordered in late 2017.
While facts about the priest’s health are at issue, the diocese has said the federal privacy law HIPPA “prohibits our discussion of Father Vargas’ medical condition.” The diocese provides medical insurance for its priests, and has said that decisions about the discussion of the priest’s medical condition were made “on the advice of its health insurance experts and legal counsel.”
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CNA Staff, Jul 17, 2020 / 09:01 am (CNA).-
A church in the New Haven, Connecticut parish at which the Knights of Columbus was founded was vandalized this week, with a satanic symbol painted on the door.
Fr. Michael McGivney, who will soon be beatified, began his priestly ministry at St. Mary’s Parish in New Haven, the city’s first parish, in 1877. The priest founded the Knights of Columbus there in 1882.
In 2018, nearby St. Joseph Church became part of St. Mary’s Parish during a diocesan consolidation process. Fr. John Paul Walker, OP, the parish pastor said in a Facebook post Thursday that vandalism at St. Joseph Church had taken place overnight.
“Words and various symbols including a satanic one were painted on the outside doors of the church,” Walker said.
“While we assess the situation and make plans to bless the church, the church will remain closed at least through the end of the day today,” he said. “Our two daily Masses, confessions, and afternoon Adoration are therefore canceled. We will be live streaming Mass at noon from the priory chapel.”
Mass and other liturgies ordinarily take place at both church buildings in the parish. But because of renovations underway at St. Mary’s Church, all parish liturgies have been taking place in St. Joseph Church.
Fr. Walker wrote on Facebook that it is not yet clear if the church will be able to reopen Friday. When it does reopen, it will be unlocked during Mass and confession times only.
“I would ask everyone in the parish to pray to Our Lord in reparation for this sacrilege, and to St. Michael for protection against all the powers of hell,” the priest said. “Please pray, too, for the perpetrator of this action, who is clearly a very disturbed individual in need of serious help.”
Police are investigating the vandalism, Walker told CNA Friday, and federal investigators could also become involved.
The incident is the latest in a growing trend of vandalism against Catholic churches in the past week.
Earlier this week, a statue of Jesus was beheaded in the Archdiocese of Miami and a statue of the Blessed Virgin at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Colorado Springs was tagged with red paint.
A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was beheaded last weekend at a church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
On July 10, a vandal spray-painted the word “idol” on the statue of the Virgin Mary at a prep school and seminary in the New York City borough of Queens.
The following day, the face, head, and upper body of a statue of the Virgin Mary were damaged in an arson attack at a parish in Boston.
At the same time that fire began, in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles the church of the Mission San Gabriel was destroyed by fire. The 18th century mission was founded by St. Junipero Serra, whom Pope Francis canonized during his 2015 visit to the U.S. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, and is being investigated for arson.
The Archdiocese of Hartford acknowledged this trend in a Facebook post, saying, “The underlying motive of these sacrilegious attacks is clear: to intimidate and instill fear in the hearts of those who worship Christ. However, our cherished Catholic faith has survived for 2,000 years in the faces of many different oppressors, and it is not about to yield now.”
The archdiocese called on Catholics to remain unafraid and to respond to acts of hatred with love, unity, and prayers for the conversion of those trying to spread fear.
On July 15, Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said in a statement that recent attacks on Catholic statues are “attacks on Catholics and people of faith.”
“While our faith calls us to be respectful of different perspectives, acts of vandalism are crimes against all who cherish democracy and mutual respect. The Knights of Columbus remains firm in its condemnation of all forms of racism and violence, including political violence. With churches, statues, and religious symbols subject to vandalism and attack, we call upon elected officials and leaders at every level to defend the religious freedom of all,” Anderson said.
Fr. McGivney served as a priest in New Haven amid an anti-Catholic climate in the late 1800s. He established the Knights of Columbus to provide spiritual aid to Catholic men and financial help for families who had lost their breadwinner.
His sainthood cause officially opened in 1997 in the Archdiocese of Hartford. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI declared the American-born priest a Venerable Servant of God in recognition of his life of heroic virtue.
In May, Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to McGiveny’s intercession, paving the way for the priest to be beatified. A date for the beatification ceremony has not yet been announced.
McGivney’s cause will require one more authenticated miracle before he can be considered for canonization.
© Catholic World Report