This guy must think he's really something...
The man in the silly hat stole millions!
While leading the Catholic diocese in one of the poorest states in the nation, former West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield spent millions private jets, limousines, plush hotels and other luxury travel, according to a report in the Washington Post.
Bransfield, pictured above centered) who was removed from public ministry in July after allegations of sexual harassment and financial abuses, took more than 150 private jet trips and 200 limo rides on the church’s tab during his 13 years in West Virginia, the report said.
He spent nearly $1 million in church funds on private jets alone at a time when his diocese was cutting funding to West Virginia Catholic schools, the Washington Post found. His travels included personal vacations and business trips to Washington, Rome, Paris, London and the Caribbean.
He also took an annual vacation to the Jersey Shore, where he often spent up to a month with friends and family while the Catholic Church paid the bills, according to receipts, flight records, church reports and other documents obtained by the Washington Post.
In August of 2018, Bransfield’s Jersey Shore bills included $276 at a liquor store in Somers Point, $1,002 at the Flanders Hotel in Ocean City and $2,975 to rent a car for a month, the newspaper found.The bishop also spent $12,386 for a private jet in and out of Atlantic City to briefly return to Washington, D.C., in the middle of his August 2018 Jersey Shore vacation, the Washington Post reported. He took a limo to the Vatican’s diplomatic office, where he was told his job was in jeopardy after two young priests accused him of sexual harassment and another priest accused him of excessive spending and other financial abuses.
Bransfield, 76, told the Washington Post he took vacations to take a break from his church work and some of the other trips were church business. He blamed his aides for booking ultra-luxury accommodations, including a $9,336-week in a penthouse suite in a Palm Beach, Florida, hotel.
“That was done by staff," he is quoted as saying.
Church officials said they may try to recover some of the money Bransfield spent on travel if it was for his personal benefit.
Some of Bransfield’s luxury travel was on business as president of the Papal Foundation, a fundraising group that often courted wealthy Catholic donors. The foundation was founded by the bishop’s close friend former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. McCarrick, the former head of the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen, was removed from public ministry and defrocked by the Vatican earlier this year after allegations he sexually abused boys, seminarians and young priests.
Bransfield is the second Catholic priest to be accused in recent weeks of spending church funds at the Jersey Shore. In August, Monsignor Joseph McLoone, was arrested and charged with theft for allegedly diverting nearly $100,000 of parish money into a secret account.
See that article here:
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Then ya got the nuns on the run...
‘Gambling nuns embezzled $500,000 from impoverished school to fund casino trips’
Two nuns who worked as teachers won’t be charged over claims they embezzled $500,000 from an impoverished school to fund casino trips. Last week, St. James Catholic School in Torrance, California announced Sister Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Chang ‘were involved in the personal use of a substantial amount of school funds.’ Both nuns were former school employees – Kreuper was the principal and Change was a teacher – with the pair telling parents the school was operating on a shoestring budget.
But an attorney for the school claimed the sisters had blown some of the huge sum on gambling trips, saying: ‘We do know that they had a pattern of going on trips, we do know they had a pattern of going to casinos, and the reality is, they used the account as their personal account.’ Authorities were tipped off to the pair’s alleged theft after the church performed a routine audit ahead of Kreuper’s retirement after 28 years at the school. Kreuper became ‘very nervous and very anxious’ about the financial review and asked staff to alter fiscal records, the monsignor, Michael Meyers said.
Meyers told an archdiocese internal auditor that ‘something was off’ and an independent forensic auditor was brought in for a deeper review. That’s when auditors discovered a ‘long forgotten’ church bank account that only Kreuper and Chang knew about. Kreuper, who handled the school’s tuition checks, had been depositing a portion of the checks into the secret account for up to ten years – endorsing the back with ‘St. James Convent,’ instead of the official ‘St. James School,’
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It's enough to make ya not like organized religion.
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"...not like organized religion." I'll never understand how daddies and mommies's only response to their kids being sexually molested by 'the good Father' was to complain to the church hierarchy and then cash the large check to buy their silence. Moral? Moral, hell! The pervs should have been severely dealt with, permanently. Use your imagination. Instead, the pervs are 'treated' then moved to another parish. this crap goes on in other denominations too, I'm not saying Catholics are the only ones.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to report that our own parish child molester, a priest by the name of Father Richard Galdon, dies in prison.
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