{"id":5637,"date":"2006-09-22T00:39:49","date_gmt":"2006-09-22T00:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/lost-one-conscience.html"},"modified":"2006-09-22T00:39:49","modified_gmt":"2006-09-22T00:39:49","slug":"lost-one-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/lost-one-conscience.html","title":{"rendered":"Lost: One Conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

This one’s a doozy, if true. A RC priest is charged with runnin a fake raffle for years, onstensibly to fund the parish school…which has had to close, naturally. What a case…<\/a><\/p>\n

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Each year, the Rev. Robert Ascolese, a well-liked pastor in this town of 6,400, ran a \u201cpower ball\u201d raffle, selling $100 tickets to raise money for a new building for St. Joseph Catholic Academy. Half the proceeds were to go to the school, and half to the lucky ticket holder.<\/p>\n

But the authorities say the only winner was Father Ascolese, who stands accused of stealing more than $600,000 from his church and several charities. The pastor, known as Father Bob here amid the cornfields, stood handcuffed in front of a judge on Thursday in the Warren County courthouse, pleaded not guilty and was released on $75,000 bail.<\/p>\n

A 32-count indictment charges that Father Ascolese, 45, who came here in 1999 to start the academy, wrote checks \u2014 including one for $100,000 \u2014 to fake people or to real ones who had never heard of the lottery, and then diverted the money to himself.<\/p>\n

From 2001 to 2005, the indictment says, the church sold more than 4,000 tickets but no one ever collected a prize. <\/p>\n

The school, which was holding classes on church grounds while awaiting the new building, closed in May because of a lack of funds. <\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

Walking out of the courthouse, Father Ascolese was asked if, when he drew a raffle ticket, the winner was a real person.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, yes,\u201d he answered.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This one’s a doozy, if true. A RC priest is charged with runnin a fake raffle for years, onstensibly to fund the parish school…which has had to close, naturally. What a case… Each year, the Rev. 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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\/5637","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=5637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}