Setting the Stage

Shortly before he died in September of 1998, Walter Benz, 72, confessed to stealing from his employers an average of $50,000 per year over a 26-year period. Benz admitted the money was used to fund expensive items such as cars, guns, antiques, a Florida condo and gambling trips to Atlantic City in the company of his secretary with whom he had lived for some years.

As newsworthy as that item was, who would expect it to occupy the local media for weeks and, quite literally, scandalize thousands of Pittsburgh area Catholics? But Benz wasn’t your average Joe Employee. He was better known as the Rev. Walter J. Benz, Pastor of St. Mary Assumption parish in Hampton and, previously, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament parish in Harrison, PA.

The target of Benz’s thefts was his parishes’ Sunday collections from which he admitted stealing an average of $1,000 per week over the course of his 26-year career. One might well wonder how such a large theft could be committed every week for 26 years without being discovered. Sadly, that is attributable to the American hierarchy’s long-standing, well-documented, conscious refusal to adopt and implement readily available procedures which would preclude such thefts and signal future attempts to compromise the system.

Does that sound like bold, unsupported conjecture? Listen to the Bishop’s take on the situation and decide for yourself. Most Rev. Donald W. Wuerl, Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, labeled Benz's thievery "an aberration. The reason it shocked everyone, including me, is that it hadn't happened before. [emphasis added - note that the Bishop is not saying there has never been an embezzlement in the Diocese of Pittsburgh but rather that, to his knowledge, there has never been one this large] He went on to point out that the diocese's 218 parishes are now audited every three years, and stated the goal is to conduct audits every two years and then every year.

Imagine that - the diocese was conducting so-called audits every 3 years and still didn’t discover Benz’s blatant thievery. There’s a good reason for that - one neither Bishop Wuerl nor the National Conference of Catholic Bishops is willing to discuss, let alone address. Benz was stealing the money before it was documented or secured in any effective manner. Audits, however in-depth, are of limited value in the absence of substantive procedures and detailed documentation to be examined; in a typical Catholic parish or diocese, those elements are minimal!

When in doubt, form a committee . . . . or two.

The bishop also noted that two committees comprised of financial and legal experts were reviewing the diocese's financial procedures and would recommend how church offertory donations, especially those which are made in cash, should be handled and how that process should be monitored. He said the diocese's college of deans has been asked to do the same and to become much more involved in monitoring the financial administration of parishes within the diocese. Ask yourself, of what value are “legal experts” and the college of deans in the development of a genuinely secure operation?

The answer is: they’re of little value, except to project a facade of concern and put their imprimatur on whatever plan the committees propose. Because long-standing precedent has established that a genuinely secure Sunday collection system is not an option Bishop Wuerl is likely to embrace, the legal experts probable role is to ensure that whatever minimal plan those committees devise will not provide any basis for legal action against the bishop or other diocesan officials by any person who subsequently determines that the diocese’s Sunday collection system remains as vulnerable as it was prior to the Benz fiasco.

If you’re at all inclined to classify the Benz case as an anomaly or a one-time event (thereby bringing into question the relevance of this website and its aggressive pursuit of Church-wide reform) you are cordially invited to view additional Sunday collection embezzlement case histories available via the Why and How section of this website.

If you don’t feel the need for further convincing, proceed to the correspondence and commentary available via the adjacent menu bar, beginning with the First Contact menu button. In that regard, please note that the menu bar buttons are aligned to present the correspondence in chronological order. For purposes of continuity and to avoid confusion when reading references to prior correspondence, it is recommended you review the correspondence in that order from top to bottom.