Sunday, August 27, 2006

Former Bishop Pilla Implicated In Alleged Kickback Scheme

Former CEO's Attorney Says Pilla Knew About Payments From Secret Account

Here is a sequence of events in the Cleveland diocese (courtesy Diogenes, @ CWNews)
1. In January, Bishop Anthony Pilla announced that he had asked the Vatican to accept his resignation. That seemed odd, since at the time he was a couple of years short of canonical retirement age. Bishop Pilla ducked questions about his reason(s) for wanting early exit. Odd.

2. In April the Vatican accepted the Pilla resignation, and immediately announced that his successor would be Bishop Richard Lennon. Again, odd. Usually a bishop's resignation is followed by a lengthy search for an appropriate successor. And the choice of Bishop Lennon-- who had made his bones in Boston by serving as apostolic administrator after Cardinal Law was run out of town-- indicated that Rome wanted a battle-tested soldier on the ground, fast.

3. To be sure, the Cleveland diocese had its problems. Bishop Pilla had faced nasty accusations that he had lied under oath in testimony involving sexual abuse by Cleveland clergy. But that had been several months earlier, and the perjury charges were no longer in the headlines at the time of the bishop's rather sudden resignation.

4. Then another nasty story arose in Cleveland: about the diocesan finance officer being investigated on charges of fraud involving over $700,000 in diocesan funds. The criminal investigation that produced this week's indictments would have been gaining steam at just about the time Bishop Pilla stepped down. An odd coincidence?

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