Who's Really Making Ongoing Payments Towards Cardinal Wuerl's Retirement?

Let me preface this by saying that I regularly peruse the Catholic Standard, official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington.  In the February 18th issue of the Standard, the supposed "Financial Report to the People of the Archdiocese of Washington, Fiscal Year 2019-2020".  I scoured that report, with my CPA eyes, and found in it no hint of the items that will be mentioned in this post.   So much for transparency.

I congratulate the staff and writers of The Pillar, for I believe they broke this news (correct me if I'm wrong).  LifeSiteNews also commented about this, and I link also to their piece for embedded in that is a link to the official audited reports of the Archdiocese.  Readers of the Standard might want to compare this and the Standard's report side by side.  I noticed that the financial report, while printed in the Standard, was not on the Standard's website.  Frankly I find that odd and I think it only serves to cast further doubt on this notion of archdiocesan transparency.

Even as one examines the official auditors' report, one really has to look for mention of this $2 million to Cardinal Wuerl.  It's in the "Net Asset" section of the Statements of Financial Position.  The subheading is "Net assets without donor restrictions"; bear this in mind, for it will be very telling later.  The number is $55.9 million, and it refers to the Notes of the Financial Statement - note m, to be precise.

So slog through the Financial Statement notes and you will find a list of items that sum to the $55.9 million.  Sure enough, we see "Continuing ministry activities for Archbishop Emeritus".  He received over $2 million this year and $1.4 million last year.  Is this sort of disbursement supposed to be an annual occurrence?  One could reasonably assume in the positive.   Taylor Marshall pointed out some interesting math behind it.  $2 million per year is equivalent to about $167k per month.  Breaking that down further, that is approximately $5k every day!  What kind of "continuing ministry activities" require $5k every day?  

Pillar and several others have posed these types of questions to the DC chancery.  These inquiries prompted Cardinal Gregory to publicize this statement.  Please notice that he says that "donations" to the Wuerl fund "were made by persons who want to cover Cardinal Wuerl's expenses.."   Therefore these "donations" are, by definition, donor-restricted.  Two paragraphs up, we saw that the official financial statements calls these donations "assets without donor restrictions"!  I regret that this statement of Cardinal Gregory's has all the smell of a damage-control alibi.  

I noticed some other interesting things in note m.  There is a "reserve for future legal costs" of $3 million.  Pray tell, what necessitates such a huge reserve?  Priestly formation, on the other hand, seems to rate only a relatively minor sum of $1 million; is that indicative of the low priority that the archdiocese places on the spiritual wellbeing of DC-area Catholics?

Some brain-storm questions I will now list.

• Why does there exist the disparity between Gregory's flim-flam excuse and the language used on the audited financial report?
• What is the ultimate source of funds for the $3.4 million that has been shelled out on Cardinal Wuerl's behalf over the past two years?
• What is the usage of these funds?  Is it strictly cash for him or are vendors being paid on Wuerl's behalf?
• Assuming that the $2 million comes from general donations (such as in-pew collections) as suggested by the Statements of Financial positions, wouldn't more worthwhile expenditures be "priestly formation" (that only received $1 million) or going towards the funding of the retirement liability?
• Is Cardinal Wuerl truly the only beneficiary of this fund?  Unanswered remains the question of who/what is paying the living expenses of Theodore McCarrick.

What we see here are yet more reasons why not to give one red penny to the Archdiocese of Washington.