Last July, the Rev. Kenneth Anderson, pastor of St. John Henry Newman Parish in Evanston, had a stark message for parishioners. The parish was running in the red — and their help was urgently needed.
Displaying a chart with various collection and budget totals, Anderson reported in the July 20 newsletter, “As can be seen, the Church is still substantially behind in overall income vs. expenses. The staff has been very dedicated to maintaining any unnecessary expenditures and keeping a very tight income vs. expense.”
Anderson asked parishioners to contribute to a special “Balance Our Budget” effort if they could.
Shamefully, even as the Evanston parish was asking its members to dig deeper, Anderson was siphoning some of the church funds for his own personal needs.
The Archdiocese of Chicago announced Anderson’s removal as pastor last Friday in a letter to parish members from Cardinal Blase J. Cupich.
In that letter, Cupich wrote, the “violations” the archdiocese uncovered from its review of Anderson’s handling of the Evanston parish’s finances “included the creation and maintenance of a separate bank account into which he deposited substantial parish funds. Some of these monies were used to cover costs unrelated to parish needs including his personal expenses.”
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Cupich added that Anderson had agreed to reimburse the church “for any funds clearly identified as covering his personal expenses.”
It’s positive, obviously, that the archdiocese ferreted out the financial shenanigans in Evanston. But the breach of trust here is likely to need more than reassurances from Cupich, as esteemed as the cardinal is by most Catholics.
The optics are horrendous. A parish cries poor, causing alarmed parishioners to shell out tens of thousands extra to “rescue” the operation, only to be told months later that the man in charge of the “Balance Our Budget” mission was stuffing his pockets with some of their contributions.
A spokesperson for the archdiocese tells us it will take some time to perform a complete review of the church’s finances but that lay parish leadership will be part of the effort and will have access to the results. On the face of it, any parishioners who wanted their money back would appear to have a good case for a refund. We don’t know how much of the shortfall came as a direct consequence of the Rev. Anderson’s irregularities, shall we say.
Concern among Chicago-area Catholics about this story, we’re sure, goes beyond the North Shore boundaries of this particular parish. The archdiocese would do well to disclose to Catholics throughout the region how this happened, where its own controls fell short, exactly what personal expenses we are talking about, and what the archdiocese has learned to help it strengthen its guardrails preventing a recurrence elsewhere.
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