stealing more than US$400,000: "I was brought up in the old regime, where pastors had power over their own funds and were never questioned"

FATHER John Skehan, 82, the elderly Kilkenny priest who was convicted of stealing more than US$400,000 from his church collection plate in Delray Beach, Florida began his 14-month sentence in a US jail 12 days ago.

The real story behind the "biggest financial scandal to hit the Catholic Church in decades" was aired in a TV documentary, White Collar Crime, featuring an in-depth interview with the fallen priest from Johnstown on RTE 1 on Monday night.

Fr Skehan spoke out for the first time since his arrest, detailing exactly how and why he took the money. The documentary also threw some new light on the case by claiming that there was more than US$7 million in church accounts when Fr Skehan retired.

He served as the priest in St Vincent Ferrer's parish for more than 40 years and was charged with stealing the money and using it to fund a "lifestyle befitting an international playboy, gambling holidays in the Bahamas and Las Vegas, lavish trips to Ireland and taking bags of money and going off to Las Vegas".

Night of arrest
He was arrested on grand theft charges more than two years after he retired from St Vincent's parish in 2003. He was holidaying in Ireland when the warrant for his arrest was issued in 2006 and he was apprehended as he stepped off the plane on US soil.

As he was driven away in a police car, the priest naively asked police whether he thought he should have an attorney.

He felt he was entitled to some of the money because he was underpaid by the church and had been given no provisions for his retirement after more than four decades of service.
"We're getting pennies for salaries," he said. "We're running a big, big business and we get absolutely nothing for it. It's supposed to be for, you know, vocation and you're doing it for God and that, which is fine. But when you put it all together, you begin to realise how much you're been used and abused down through the years and you have access to this money and it's so easy to use it in other areas.

"But the parish never suffered. I did everything that could possibly be done for that parish."Fr Skehan maintained that, as the leader of St Vincent's parish, he had the right to spend the church funds as he saw fit.

"I was brought up in the old regime, where pastors had power over their own funds and were never questioned, so I felt I could do with the money what was needed," he said...
...Where it went"I withheld that money as a contingency plan for when people needed the money. And the parish made no provisions for retired priests, once you retire, you're own your own. I needed some money for my retirement."

Answering questions about how he spent the money and replying to allegations about gambling trips to Las Vegas and abroad, Fr Skehan said: "Some people do go gambling (to Las Vegas) but there are also some beautiful golf courses there, so that was the condition on which I went. For golf," he said. "I had no interest in gambling, ever, and Guinan agreed to play golf with me. In the evenings, we'd go and see a show and he would head off to the tables and I'd go to bed."

And what about that infamous gold coin collection worth US$400,000 he is alleged to have bought with church funds?"I paid for 99% of the things I bought with my own money," he said. "Well, maybe not 99%, but at least 80%."

Parishioners' support
These claims were supported by many parishioners of St Vincent's and he was described by Delray Beach locals as the "beating heart" and "driving force" of the parish, as well as "hugely popular with his parishioners".
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