Dajjal, I am not arguing with you or your premise. But. Have you yet heard where the millions and millions in donations went over the past 8 years? There is a jot here that has been leaked out, and a tittle there, but no real accounting. Do you think more will be coming forthwith? The visual among the public of the Priests for Life organization is really an image of only one man, Father Pavone, who is selfless and dedicated and stood with the Schiavo family when those who should did not. No question about it. In fact, if Father squandered, by simple lack of oversight, the whole wad he has dang sure has singularly done as much for Life as any one human on earth and no cash assets to show for it. His first Bishop in Amarillo was Bishop Yanta who was thrilled and honored to receive Fr. Pavone, and together they kicked off a splendid and well promoted ground breaking for the seminary to be built housing the priests and headquartering the Priests for Life.
I attended that affair and Bishop Yanta was beside himself with happiness and delight with Father, and thought Pavone a marvelous fit for the Amarillo diocese, who had a reputation for its own dedication to Life. The sister of deceased Cardinal O’Connor, of NYC, attended and the Roe lady, whose name at the moment has flown right out of my head. Then things went asunder and nothing happened, and nothing continued to happen. Bishop Yanta fell silent on the subject publicly, but there was absolutely no money for the colossol plan became clear to the shock of everyone. The rendering of the seminary was beautiful with arches and portico. Enthusiasm was abundant. This failure was not the fault of Bishop Yanta, whose diocese could not and would not have ever been put up as the backers of this sizable expense of millions, or whatever the seminary grounds and building costs were. So, the money presumably (my presumption) would have had to come from mostly Pavone’s bank account, or at the very least from his broad efforts to go out and obtain the funding. So, what happen there? Bishop Yanta then retires within a few years, Pavone is only loosely attached to the diocese and is traveling about doing his ministry back east and so on.
Now comes the new Bishop Zurek at post for a year or so, and all heck has broken loose from all the unfinished business. Where will it lead, now that Pavone has a canon lawyer to assist him in a “defense” of sorts?
That's true and the repeated references people make to audits bothers me. I always get nervous when people start throwing that, "books have been audited" stuff around. Some sorts of audits don't do anything like what they're implying they do. An awful lot of people who read that phrase, however, think that an audit in and of itself means that all the expenditures recorded in the books are just fine and on the up and up.
Now, conversely, you can have an audit that will detail how much metal some gnat may have removed from the weight of a dime while it was in you custody. In addition, it can alert you to the fact that a series of "Office Supplies" entries have been going to firm named "Honey Dew Does" and let you figure out whether or not that's an appropriate office supply vendor or if someone is sharpening their pencil a bit too often at your expense. An audit that gives you a clean bill of health for one type of financial reports doesn't do anything except certify that you have appropriate, sufficient, and accurate information to support those reports and therefore everyone can get GAAP happy.
There are different types of audits and the big accounting firms are more than happy to lend their name to your clean bill of health if you'll let them limit what they review. I hope, very sincerely hope, that they guy writing this article is right, that the Bishop is the guy with the problem, that prayer gets the Bishop to see the error of his ways, and it all turns out to be a very happy and instructive tale. Really, that's what I'd love to see. On the other hand, how about a couple of articles and interviews with the accounting crew and financial folks this priest has trusted?