Dear Catholic Friends,
In response to my efforts to expose the active homosexuality of certain priests in the Society of St. John, a clerical association in the Diocese of Scranton, PA, many of you have contacted me asking for further documentation concerning not only their homosexual molestation of young men, but also the Society's financial misconduct. This letter will be devoted primarily to the latter.
But before considering the financial debacle created by the Society, let me provide a brief update on the Society's sexual misconduct. There are now affidavits testifying to the Society's immoral and lewd conduct with young men. Moreover, again, there is the personal testimony given by the young seminarian who was homosexually molested by Fr. Urrutigoity soon after Fr. Urrutigoity was dismissed from the Society of St. Pius X seminary in Winona, Minnesota. This testimony is a matter of record because it was given at a diocesan inquiry to three diocesan authorities: Bishop John M. Dougherty, the Auxiliary of the Diocese of Scranton; Rev. Joseph R. Kopacz, Vicar for Priests; and a diocesan attorney.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of criminal behavior on the part of Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity and Fr. Eric Ensey, and despite the fact that many young men have admitted to me that they have slept one-on-one with priests in the Society, the members of the Society continue to deny that there has been any one-on-one sleeping with young men, to say nothing of gross immoral behavior, including homosexual molestation. Fr. Daniel Fullerton, Fr. Dominic Carey, Fr. Basel Sarweh, Fr. Urrutigoity, and Fr. Ensey have all misled, and in some cases, simply lied to donors seeking to know the truth about the charges I have made. Other clerics may have participated in covering up as well. Fr. Dominic O’Connor, Fr. Marshall Roberts, Deacon Joseph Levine, and Deacon James Lane have refused to acknowledge the facts and case against the Society of St. John. All of the above will soon be addressed with the filing of criminal and civil charges implicating both the Society of St. John and the Diocese of Scranton.
Turning now to the financial misconduct of the Society of St. John, a word must be said about the seriousness of this issue. Every dollar given to the Society of St. John was a dollar given to Jesus Christ and His Church. The use of these funds for purposes other than those expressed to and by the donors is not only illegal, but also immoral. In short, the Society of St. John has a fiduciary responsibility to use the money it has raised in a manner consistent with its promulgated goals. Failure to do so violates both the civil law and, even more importantly, the moral law known both to reason and to faith.
Please keep in mind that a complete picture of the Society of St. John's financial misconduct would take literally hundreds of pages to document fully. I will touch only on some of the "highlights" in the Society's financial history.
Let me start with the present. Anyone who is currently contributing to the Society of St. John should know that the Society has been evicted from one of the properties it was permitted to use by one of its former donors. This home, which borders the Society's 1,000-acre property in Shohola, was called "Fatima House" by the Society. The owner of this property, who had previously made substantial contributions to the Society, was repelled by his subsequent knowledge of the Society's immoral conduct. The owner therefore told Fr. Urrutigoity to vacate the property. Fr. Urrutigoity did not honor the owner's request. As a result, the owner of the property was compelled to serve the Society of St. John with an eviction notice demanding that the Society vacate the property by December 31, 2001. As of the writing of this letter, the Society has still not complied with the owner's request. The attorney for the owner has therefore filed an "ejectment action" that will lead in due course to the Society being escorted from the property by the Shohola sheriff.
Although the members of the Society had been repeatedly instructed not to contact the owner of Fatima House, Fr. Fullerton continued to apply pressure on the owner with telephone calls requesting special arrangements for the purchase of his property. Fr. Fullerton asked the owner to permit the Society to remain in the house until the Society received a supposed inheritance of $300,000. Having grown tired of the Society’s penchant for subterfuge, the owner has continued to insist that the Society vacate the property.
The owner of Fatima House had allowed the Society to occupy the house for a year and a half without paying any rent. The Society has now "repaid" the owner by failing to vacate the property in a timely manner. The Society's willingness to abuse the hospitality of the owner is no doubt due to the fact that this piece of property is essential to the Society's would-be development plans. Indeed, the Society originally persuaded the owner to purchase this home because it gave the Society a potential public access road onto the Society's own 1,000-acre property. Without the Fatima House property in hand, the Society can no longer pretend to have a development project, because every other possible public access route is financially infeasible. As almost everyone knows by now, this situation was the result of the Society's purchasing the Shohola property without first making sure there would be adequate means of access and proper zoning for the envisioned development.
In addition to being served an eviction notice for Fatima House, the Society has also been told to leave the home that it occupies on the other side of Route 434 known as "St. Joseph's House." The owner of this home also permitted Society members to live there at no cost. Nonetheless, although Fr. Urrutigoity's personal secretary assured the owner that the Society would have all of its belongings out of the house by January 1, 2002, the Society has not vacated the house as of the date of this letter.
The fact that the Society is a "deadbeat" organization is nothing new. The Society’s debt is somewhere in the vicinity of two and a half million dollars. In addition, the Society has apparently spent the five million or so dollars it has raised since its inception. As a result, there is much speculation about the possibility of hidden overseas accounts. Indeed, one wonders where the seven and a half million or so dollars has gone. As Bishop Timlin admitted to me in one of our face-to-face meetings, the Society "spends money like drunken sailors."
Charges of financial mismanagement, as many of you may already know, were made long ago by members of the Society's original Board of Advisors. The Society's spending habits, as well as other concerns about its overall vision, led to the resignation of six prominent and key members of that Board.
Putting aside the ill-advised purchase of the 1,000-acre property in Shohola - the white elephant to which the Society daily pitches hay - the Society spent over $100,000 on luxury furniture shortly after closing on the Shohola property. Responding to questions submitted by Dr. Thomas Droleskey concerning the Society’s misuse of donors’ contributions, Fr. Urrutigoity defended in writing the purchase of this luxury furniture by claiming that not only the furniture, but also the homes on the Shohola property, were intended for the College of St. Justin Martyr, not for the personal use of the Society members. Fr. Urrutigoity wrote: "Most important of all, it is misleading to suggest that we have purchased this furniture for long-term use in our own living quarters. Rather, the long-term plan is to use the homes that we have furnished as the basis of operations for the College of St. Justin Martyr." Of course, none of this furniture, not to mention the homes themselves, has been given to the College. In fact, the College was not even permitted to use the Society’s database for fund-raising purposes. In a word, the Society used the College as a banner or front to raise money, but never gave any of the money raised to the College.
The Society also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for engineering, sewage, and architectural studies for the Shohola property. This money was spent even though the Society, at the time when these studies were done, had no public access road onto its property. With the loss of Fatima House, the Society is effectively without a legal public access route.
Concerning the development of the Society's Shohola property, the Society's own developer, the founder of St. Joseph's Enterprises, informed Fr. Urrutigoity and his personal secretary, Mary Schwerdt, about a week before the attack on the World Trade Center, that his studies revealed it was economically infeasible to develop the Shohola property in the absence of $15,000,000 or more for infrastructure alone. Nonetheless, a few weeks later, Fr. Urrutigoity or Mary Schwerdt informed Bishop Dougherty that their developer had become "impoverished" by the World Trade Center disaster, and thus the developer found it necessary to withdraw from the project. I myself was present at the meeting in the diocesan chancery office when Bishop Dougherty expressed his personal condolences to the developer for his supposed financial losses. The developer then informed Bishop Dougherty that he was indeed NOT impoverished, but that he had withdrawn from the Society's project because his studies had revealed that the project was infeasible. In fact, the developer had come to the meeting with the Bishops to make that very point in person, and to present his studies in support of his findings. The Society was thus caught in an outright lie. Even a disaster of the horrible proportions of September 11th found its use in the Society’s efforts to continue to promote a project that should have been pronounced "dead" long ago. Indeed, even after this meeting with the bishops, the Society continued to advertise the St. Joseph's Enterprises development project on its website until the developer insisted that it be removed.
Also of great concern is the Society’s habit of not paying its creditors, yet working with other professionals in the same field in order to push forward its designs. The justification for this kind of careless abandon with the credit of others is that "God’s will" is thereby served. Thus, the services of many have been abused because in all likelihood they will never be repaid, at least not by the Society.
During the summer of 2000, the Society of St. John ran three different television advertisements filmed and produced in France by Lavelle Murray of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The production bill was approximately $400,000. In response to these television promotions, the Society received twelve phone calls and no money.
Many additional examples could be brought forward to demonstrate the Society's misuse of the money donated to them by good Catholics, but for the sake of brevity I will focus on one example which is emblematic of the problems with the Society and its Superior General, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity. Fr. Urrutigoity hired his former classics teacher from the seminary in Argentina, Mr. Nestor Sequeiros, to teach at the College of St. Justin Martyr. Long before Mr. Sequeiros appeared on the scene in Shohola, Society members told me of his superb teaching abilities, penetrating intellect, and academic prowess. I was informed, for example, that Mr. Sequeiros was so much the classical man that he had two Ph.D.s, one in classics and one in physical education. (I learned later that Mr. Sequeiros did not have even one Ph.D.) Mr. Sequeiros was hired, according to Fr. Urrutigoity, to reform the entirely wrong-headed approach to the study of Latin by most universities and colleges. Mr. Sequeiros was in the process, I was told, of writing and promulgating an entirely new method of teaching Latin based upon the liturgy, a program that would bring Latin back to the center of Catholic life and thereby launch the Society of St. John into renown and glory.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when Mr. Sequeiros appeared on the scene unable to communicate effectively in English. During the year that he lived with the Society, his English did not improve significantly, despite my insistence, as the President of the College, that he must work on his English daily in preparation for being an effective classroom teacher with English-speaking students. Nonetheless, Mr. Sequeiros proved to be resistant to any and all direction, and thus he proved to be a constant thorn in my efforts to establish the College. All of this has been documented in letters of concern sent by me to Fr. Urrutigoity over a period of months.
In order to underline the importance of these events, it must be noted that Mr. Sequeiros was paid a salary of $65,000 per year, and that he was also given free room and board, free use of a car, a computer, and other amenities. In fact, Mr. Sequeiros was the highest paid employee of the Society, but he never did the work for which he was hired by the Society. When the injustice of this situation was brought to Fr. Urrutigoity's attention at one of the many meetings held to resolve the problems with Mr. Sequeiros, Fr. Urrutigoity became defensive and said coldly: "We can spend OUR money anyway we like." Fr. Urrutigoity's statement goes a long way to expressing the depth of the Society's financial troubles and mismanagement.
Although I insisted that Mr. Sequeiros no longer have anything to do with the College, Fr. Urrutigoity allowed Mr. Sequeiros to continue his "work" for the Society. Deacon Joseph Levine was then put in charge of Mr. Sequeiros. After a few weeks, Deacon Joseph Levine also insisted that Mr. Sequeiros be fired because Mr. Sequeiros, in a year’s time, had produced only three pages of the Latin text he had been hired to write. (I have a copy of Deacon Levine’s letter to that effect.) Nonetheless, Mr. Sequeiros continued to live with the Society, at full salary, for a few more months until he was finally encouraged to return to Argentina, with promises to bring him back when the financial situation had improved. In sum, taking into account his salary, free room and board, and other amenities, Fr. Urrutigoity wasted upwards of $100,000 on his good friend and former mentor, Mr. Sequeiros.
Donors should also know that the Society has hired a professional catering service from one of the gourmet restaurants in the Shohola area in order to feed its own members. For a clerical group with a supposed Benedictine spirituality, this seems preposterous indeed. Among other basic duties, one would think these men could at least cook for themselves, especially in the midst of a serious financial crisis.
If even a portion of the information above were known to the Society's donors, the Society would have to shut down its operations tomorrow, for then its donors would know that the Society’s financial policies have driven it into a chronic debt service apostolate - the debt being its own.
Many have asked me how the Society of St. John will come to an end. With apologies to T.S. Eliot, I always answer: "Not with a bang, but with a default."
Please pass this information on to those who may still be donating to the Society of St. John. In addition, please feel free to contact me for further confirmation and details concerning any of the above.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Jeffrey M. Bond
President
College of St. Justin Martyr
142 Market Road
Greeley, PA 18425
570-685-5945
jmb@csjm.org