Expert advisers urge bishops to improve accounting

A national advisory Accounting Practices Committee has urged the U.S. bishops to institute tighter internal controls over finances in the nation's 19,000 parishes.

Its recommendations included establishing clear diocesan policies about conflict of interest, protection of whistleblowers and a fraud policy that would include prosecution in all cases.

It also called for each diocese to require every parish to submit an annual report to the bishop on the names and professional titles of the members of the parish finance council, dates the council met, when it approved the parish budget and what budget information was given to parishioners and when. The report should include a copy of the parish's published financial statement, it said.

The committee, a lay group of certified public accountants convened to advise the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, met in Washington Jan. 11 and 12. Its recommendations were released by the bishops' conference the following week.

Just two days before the committee met, a recently retired pastor in the Richmond, Va., diocese was arrested on charges of embezzling at least $600,000 from two parishes where he had been pastor. Within a few days the estimate of how much was missing rose to more than $1 million.

Last October two former pastors of a parish in Delray Beach, Fla., were accused of having misused more than $6 million from weekend collections and other parish funds over a period of several decades.

In December two researchers at Villanova University in Pennsylvania reported that four out of five diocesan finance officers who answered a national survey said they had experienced at least one case of embezzlement of parish funds within the past five years.

The committee of CPAs, chaired by William G. Weldon, chief financial officer of the Charlotte, N.C., diocese, recommended that all dioceses require an annual statement signed by the pastor and members of the finance council certifying that they have met, developed and discussed the financial statements and budget of the parish.

It recommended that every diocese provide "thorough diocesan training" to parish finance council members.

Each parish should be required to "complete an annual internal control questionnaire" with appropriate review and follow-up at the diocesan level.

The committee said that "many dioceses already have very good policies in place," and its recommendations should be seen as encouragement to enhance those policies or redouble efforts to see that they are enforced.

For the longer term the committee recommended development of a parish best-practices manual, similar to the "Diocesan Financial Issues" document that has been developed for dioceses. It also recommended integrating financial training into the seminary curriculum so that future priests will be better prepared to handle parish finances.

Bishop Dennis M. Schnurr of Duluth, bishops' conference treasurer, called the committee's recommendations "reasonable and helpful" and said he would implement them in his diocese.

He said he did not concur, however, with the recommendation of financial training in the seminary.

"Seminary days are jam-packed enough, and I am not certain that finances should be added to the schedule," he said in a statement Jan. 18. "Finance is an area of parish ministry that is wide open for participation of the laity. Members of the laity who have expertise and experience with administration and finance should be invited and encouraged to consider a stewardship of their talents."

The message to seminarians, he added, should be that "as parish leaders they are to recognize, call forth and coordinate the talents that God has entrusted to a particular parish community."

The Accounting Practices Committee includes nine CPAs affiliated with dioceses, four representing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, and four CPA advisers from large public accounting firms.

By JERRY FILTEAU

Catholic News Service

Washington

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