{"id":5420,"date":"2006-10-07T09:16:25","date_gmt":"2006-10-07T09:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html"},"modified":"2006-10-07T09:16:25","modified_gmt":"2006-10-07T09:16:25","slug":"the-latest-from-s-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html","title":{"rendered":"The latest from S. Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Palm Beach Post on a financial scheme of the two accused plus another priest.<\/a><\/p>\n

In his own defense:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Greeted by police set to arrest him on grand theft charges at Palm Beach International Airport last month, the Rev. John Skehan "blurted out that he had misappropriated money" from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, a search warrant released Friday shows.<\/p>\n

Skehan admitted several times that he misdirected money from the church, but told investigators he saw himself as the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company who wasn’t properly compensated, the warrant shows.<\/p>\n

"Skehan gave his opinion that he was never properly paid by the diocese, he was running a big business and getting nothing for it," the search warrant says. " … He took what he had coming to him, as the diocese was cheap and never paid for his education."<\/p>\n

In discussing how much was misappropriated, Skehan told police it was a "mountain of money," the document shows.<\/p>\n

But in the same breath, the 79-year-old retired pastor told investigators that a lot of that money was used on other people.<\/p>\n

Police have charged Skehan and his successor, the Rev. Francis Guinan, 63, with stealing more than $400,000 from the parish’s donations. An audit conducted by the Diocese of Palm Beach alleges the pair misappropriated $8.7 million.<\/p>\n

According to the warrant, Skehan said the money, in many cases, was for other people. He said he left in his will $4 million in a school endowment fund and admitted to a second, $2.7 million hidden fund that he planned to hand over when he retired.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Palm Beach Post on a financial scheme of the two accused plus another priest. In his own defense: Greeted by police set to arrest him on grand theft charges at Palm Beach International Airport last month, the Rev. John Skehan "blurted out that he had misappropriated money" from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe latest from S. Florida - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The latest from S. Florida - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Palm Beach Post on a financial scheme of the two accused plus another priest. In his own defense: Greeted by police set to arrest him on grand theft charges at Palm Beach International Airport last month, the Rev. John Skehan "blurted out that he had misappropriated money" from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, a…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-10-07T09:16:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The latest from S. Florida - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The latest from S. Florida - Via Media","og_description":"The Palm Beach Post on a financial scheme of the two accused plus another priest. In his own defense: Greeted by police set to arrest him on grand theft charges at Palm Beach International Airport last month, the Rev. John Skehan "blurted out that he had misappropriated money" from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, a…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-10-07T09:16:25+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/the-latest-from-s-florida.html","name":"The latest from S. 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Florida"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}