{"id":6311,"date":"2006-08-24T10:47:54","date_gmt":"2006-08-24T10:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/implicated.html"},"modified":"2006-08-24T10:47:54","modified_gmt":"2006-08-24T10:47:54","slug":"implicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/implicated.html","title":{"rendered":"Implicated?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bishop Pilla is implicated in the Cleveland Diocese CFO case. The defense brings him up as a means of showing that the whole thing was above board, it’s not what you think, and everyone knew about it:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Smith is accused of being paid $270,000 in a secret church account. Lawyers for Zgoznik said that their client was not only authorized to make those payments but that top church officials knew about them, including the recently retired bishop.<\/p>\n

"The chief financial officer was aware of it, the committee that reviewed the finances made up of lay people and priests were aware of it, the CPA firm that audited the books every year was aware of it, the bishop was aware of it, and now because of the multi problems, I think, in this diocese, people are just saying, ‘Oh no, we didn’t know and we didn’t authorize,’ so it’s a tragedy," said defense attorney Robert Rotatori.<\/p>\n

Smith allegedly received another $784,000 in kickbacks in return for steering more than $17 million in church business to outside companies owned by Zgoznik.<\/p>\n

Smith’s attorney said the payments are not what they appear to be.<\/p>\n

"We think that there are some misunderstandings which we hope to clear up and we look forward to doing so at trial, in the courtroom with the jury," said attorney Philip Kushner<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bishop Pilla is implicated in the Cleveland Diocese CFO case. The defense brings him up as a means of showing that the whole thing was above board, it’s not what you think, and everyone knew about it: Smith is accused of being paid $270,000 in a secret church account. Lawyers for Zgoznik said that their…<\/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-6311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nImplicated? - 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\/08\/implicated.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Implicated? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bishop Pilla is implicated in the Cleveland Diocese CFO case. The defense brings him up as a means of showing that the whole thing was above board, it’s not what you think, and everyone knew about it: Smith is accused of being paid $270,000 in a secret church account. 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The defense brings him up as a means of showing that the whole thing was above board, it’s not what you think, and everyone knew about it: Smith is accused of being paid $270,000 in a secret church account. 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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\/6311","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=6311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}