Given that this priest seems to have operated as a con artist, any kind of sob story excuse is probably just more of his con. Although I do not normally disbelieve survivors' claims of abuse, in this case I seriously doubt whether the alleged abuse even occurred.
While it's true that those who abused tend to be those who themselves abuse others, it remains the case that justice should should be served completely to the degree that it is possible.
It just seems like you can't really know what all is going on here. This soul couldn't save himself from, well, himself, and so it seems best that he not bother trying to minister to others for a while at least.
I used to be a prison visitor at Reading Prison (yes, Oscar Wilde slept there). One prisoner confessed that he had just been an unsuccessful drug smuggler - he had been caught the first time he tried it. But, since being in Reading, he had learnt about burglary, fraud, how to break into every type of car and much more. It was a University of crime.
It is most likely as a lecturer at such a University that this Capuchin will be useful. With special seminar sessions on concocting sob stories.
It's disturbing that there are "several Polish clerics" who came to US and engaged in fraud. And the Pillar just reported on one from India who stole a large sum of money from his US congregation. I wonder if these clergy who come from countries less prosperous than USA are more prone to fall victim to temptation when they land here and see lots of money. Perhaps they think the US Catholics won't miss it, or can afford it, or perhaps they feel resentful that people here have more than people where they grew up. The US Bishops should consider some form of extra monitoring on such priests.
Yes, but I wonder if like the shuffling off of child abusing priests, these priests were no longer wanted in their home countries and given a good recommendation for an assignment far away from where they had been.
There are priests that come here under the radar screen and are not really recommended by their superiors in their home country. There is the Polish priest who was removed from his seminary in Poland for homosexuality and was accepted into the seminary for the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri and ordained. He subsequently took over as pastor of St. Stanislaus Church in St. Louis when it left the Catholic Church and made it a place for homosexuals, transvestites, bizarre activities in which he showed his true colors. I know a Mexican priest who was removed from seminary in Mexico for homosexuality and admitted to the seminary by the same religious order here in the United States, despite the opposition of the Mexicans. Most foreign priests in the US are good ones, but there are some that are too quickly accepted here in the U.S. because of the priest shortage and the abundance of liberal and pro-homosexual religious superiors and bishops.
Poland also has a significant amount of clericalism, and from what I understand it's much worse than in America because the Church there has enjoyed prominent place in society for many years now.
A priest we know said that he believes the Church in Poland is very similar to the American Church in the 50s. There are many very holy, wonderful priests, but there are others who very much enjoy their privileged position in Polish society (which is rapidly fading because of secularization and their own arrogance/complacency/scandal). The Polish Church is still strong, but the Polish Church of John Paul II's day is not the reality now.
There may come a time when Polish people look at the Catholic Church as the Irish do now - as another villain in their historic oppression along with foreign powers.
I hope that day doesn't come, but I do think it will. It's already off to a good start. The rhetoric in Poland around abortion is also similar to how it was in Ireland before it was legalized.
That is not true. The vast majority of Polish priests are superior to American priests in both their sanctity, learning, dedication, and orthodoxy. Some bad apples occur like anywhere and, unfortunately, some bad priests seek to work somewhere else when they are caught by their superiors in Poland. I would say that of the 50 or more Polish priests I have met working in the United States, the vast majority make most American priests look inferior in regards to ability and Catholic zeal.
They are also very much humble and approachable. One of the reasons is probably that priests in Poland are required to do the so-called Kolenda during Christmas season (which in Poland is December 25 to February 2) when parish priests visit all the people in their territoral parish, door to door. Though it used to be an event where nearly every priest was treated with great honors in the homes of pious Catholics, now with the growing secularization in Poland their visits are openly rejected by many, hopefully just with a polite no thank you, but probably not in all situations. That is a humbling experience few American Catholic priests ever have.
I don't know what you mean by "that is not true," but I'm not commenting on their character or their holiness.
My comment was in reference to the cultural response to priests in Poland as opposed to the U.S. (although the Polish response has changed for the worse within the past 10 years or so, but ours has been instinctively negative for quite some time).
I'd argue that American Catholic priests had some of those issues after the Spotlight scandals and the very public related issues. I mean, an American priest friend of mine told me about a time he went to a restaurant and the waiter asked him to his face if he was becoming a priest so that he could have better access to little boys. I'm not saying Polish priests don't hear that and I know the secularization there is occurring rapidly, but just like in the U.S., part of the problem is letting go of that clericalism. It isn't most priests, but there are enough bad apples to seemingly spoil their reputations, and if they don't realize that, it'll keep getting worse. Plus, the priests have enjoyed political support from PiS for a long time, and now they're out of power.
I don't see clericalism as a problem like you do, meaning the clericalism in which a priest takes charge of his parish like a good father in a family instead of relegating it to a bunch of amateur lay people. I think we have given lay people too much responsibility.
It is thanks to clericalism that the Church thrived before 1960 and now does not. I do agree with you that Poland is becoming worse, and that includes the seeping in of some priests wanting to be more modern like their Western European counterparts. I think the influence of the Catholic Church on PiS is overblown. That most of PiS politicians were prolife conservative Catholics would make them gravitate towards supporting Catholic issues, but the ridiculous restrictions PiS during COVID placed on Mass attendance and the banning of people being able to visit loved ones graves in November of 2020 shows that the party did not align themselves completely with the Church like they should have.
Before 1960 we had a very vibrant lay Catholic Action movement -- Christian Family Movement, Young Christian Workers, Catholic student, women's, peasants, labor, journalist, banking and other organizations. The Church thrived because of these efforts.
And on many matters, it is the parish priest who is the amateur, while the lay faithful have actual training, competency and experience in certain duties.
It is not about lay people participating, but about priests being in charge. A leader does not have to be an expert in everything, but he is still in charge. He can ask lay people for advice, like I asked my teenage son about buying a new computer recently.
An example of laity going too far is what happened to me when my son was going to receive Holy Communion. The local parish had an American pastor and a Polish associate pastor. The Polish people wanted First Communion for their kids in Polish and the pastor, a good and kind priest, agreed. The Polish priest wanted to prepare the kids as in Poland priests or religious sisters prepare children for the Sacraments. The pastor told the associate pastor that he would have to go through the Director of Religious Education, a lay woman. The DRE gave the whole Polish group a lecture that was so full of theological errors it made all the parents cringe. At a subsequent meeting we asked the Polish priest why can't we just have him prepare the kids. He said "I would, but the pastor is afraid of the DRE."
I took my son out of the parish and signed him up with a nearby Archdiocesan Polish language Catholic Mission which also had only 2 priests. There the associate pastor taught the kids. The entire mission, with more parishioners and Masses than my local parish had, had only 2 lay employees: the organist and a part time secretary who worked 8 hours total a week. And the priests even distributed Communion to hundreds of people each Sunday without extraordinary lay ministers. They did not need the army of lay people bossing them around. When a certain parish event came up, they asked for volunteers for that specific event and it worked great. I love good clericalism!
//The Capuchin Province of St. Mary, headquartered in New York, declined to comment on why the priest used a public defender, or whether he has yet been formally dismissed from the order.//
//The province told The Pillar it had no comment.//
About the same in my Capuchin parish after one of their friars molested parish girls. No comment on anything. Parishioners were told to their face they had no rights to any information (which is, of course true, we have no rights). They wouldn't even confirm information that came out in the court trial and seemed annoyed we followed the court proceedings, almost like we were snooping on them.
There is no way that my employer nor any of the charities whose boards I sit on would ever have missed easily verifiable background check items like a medical license, charity incorporation or college degree. Yet the NY Capuchins didn't bother to perform a meaningful background check despite all of the promises they are protecting our children and protecting our tithes.
The bottom line is that we have a Church which says they are protecting our children but will not give the laity the right to know how they are protecting our children or our tithes. In such circumstances, they should not be trusted.
Lastly, I applaud The Pillar for continuing to report on this story. Even in the Capuchin's "no comment" we have learned much.
I am truly so grateful for the Pillar's reporting on these sexual abuse cases and the like. Since so many in the clergy won't address the abuse, it seems like a vocal laity is the way forward to demanding change.
I too am grateful for the Pillar coverage. Since Church Militant shut down, there is no other US Catholic news outlet regularly covering clergy SA, theft and fraud cases. Church Militant was arguably a biased tabloid of questionable journalistic quality, but when the legit Catholic outlets refuse to cover clergy misconduct, you take what information sources are available if you want to be an informed layperson. It's disheartening that certain other "Catholic news" purveyors including a former CM staffer apparently don't think these stories should be discussed, especially if the cleric involved has prominent supporters. Some days I feel we're back in the Spotlight era.
So much for what my grade school nuns taught me - that every priest’s mother goes straight to heaven 🤦♂️
“White, Bielecki’s attorney, argued that the abuse Bielecki allegedly experienced, along with alleged verbal abuse and violence from his mother, contributed to his fraudulent theft as a friar.”
It is interesting how conservative religious orders like Miles Christi are suppressed for individual priests having been found guilty of abuse, but the Capuchins and other liberal religious orders who have a much higher percentage of abusers in their ranks are not disciplined by Pope Francis and the Vatican
Wasn’t it the founder in the Miles Christi who was the abuser? Also the legion not being suppressed tends to discredit your hypothesis. Interesting reporting by the Pillar recently that one possible reason for this was there would be too many in limbo clerics
That is true, but how do the Capuchins get away with not removing this priest from their order? There was a visitation of American seminaries ordered under Pope Benedict XVI which showed that the diocesan seminaries had fixed themselves but the religious orders had seminaries still infiltrated by homosexuals. I know for example that when I once visited a friend (who has homosexual tendencies) at his residence near the Catholic Theological Union, the seminarians for his religious order (one of the top 10 in size, but I do not want to reveal the name because of my friend) were so ridiculously effeminate and gay acting that I would have not let my teenage son even spent a night there.
I had no problems sending my teenage son to a weekend retreat on his own with Miles Christi, who are renowned for both their holy and manly priests.
The Legion is different. Though I am a big fan, let's be frank: Pope Francis' administrator of Vatican City until he retired on March 1 was Legionary Cardinal Vergez, while the man Francis named Camerlengo, meaning the man who will administer the Church when the Pope dies, is Cardinal Farrell, a former Legionary priest whose older brother, the former Secretary of the Dicastry for Christian Unity, is still a Legionary priest. Though a good order, they have a lot of clout in the Vatican that Miles Christi did not have (but MC was supported by Pope Francis' archenemy in Argentina, Archbishop Aguer of La Plata).
We don't know whether this priest is still a member of the order or not. He's using a public defender which implies he may have been removed but the order isn't saying.
Not sure I am inclined to believe such stories from a consummate teller of tales. Best for him to practice living the ascetic life behind bars; twenty years should be enough to get it right.
"It's not my fault, my past made me do it". What a poor excuse for a defense! Satan has no shame. This statement is used to justify his inability to feel remorse for his actions. The only reason for this man's sadness is that he got caught. The repercussions to the Capuchin friars is irreparable. This guy is just interested in his own self interest. In prison , he should work hard labor to pay back his debt to those he swindled.
You cannot trust anything this man claims. I know someone like this, Lies, lies and slander, blaming others for his psychopathic behaviour. Throw away the key.
I would simply look at what he did, and sentence accordingly.
Because I assume that he would simply defraud again, once he gets out of prison. It's not clear to me he is repentant of his frauds.
I am tired of those from the church (whether lay or cleric) getting lesser sentences. They know that those associated with the church are soft targets, and perhaps they should be sentenced more harshly, to discourage such behavior.
An investigation should also be done into his clerical supervisors, who let this criminal go rogue. Accountability is needed all the way up the chain of command.
Clearly this priest needs help. Whether he plays the blame game or others do is not important at this time. I hear the term”brother priests” and wonder what that really means. If someone is suffering,shouldn’t those around him try to help or is the GoodSamaritan story the best we can do. Maybe they didn’t know what was going on but they do now.I wonder how much support is being given him or can they hardly wait to see him imprisoned so they will be free of their “brother”. Jesus dealt with sinners like me all of the time,I wonder how He would be dealing with Father? I think I know.
Blaming childhood abuse for committing half a million in theft seems like a slap in the face to survivors of childhood abuse.
When did he have time to even hear anything from the gospel with all of the masquerading?
Given that this priest seems to have operated as a con artist, any kind of sob story excuse is probably just more of his con. Although I do not normally disbelieve survivors' claims of abuse, in this case I seriously doubt whether the alleged abuse even occurred.
This is how I felt reading this, too. I do normally take survivors seriously, but this just has an air of fraud all the way around.
Yup.
While it's true that those who abused tend to be those who themselves abuse others, it remains the case that justice should should be served completely to the degree that it is possible.
It just seems like you can't really know what all is going on here. This soul couldn't save himself from, well, himself, and so it seems best that he not bother trying to minister to others for a while at least.
I used to be a prison visitor at Reading Prison (yes, Oscar Wilde slept there). One prisoner confessed that he had just been an unsuccessful drug smuggler - he had been caught the first time he tried it. But, since being in Reading, he had learnt about burglary, fraud, how to break into every type of car and much more. It was a University of crime.
It is most likely as a lecturer at such a University that this Capuchin will be useful. With special seminar sessions on concocting sob stories.
It's disturbing that there are "several Polish clerics" who came to US and engaged in fraud. And the Pillar just reported on one from India who stole a large sum of money from his US congregation. I wonder if these clergy who come from countries less prosperous than USA are more prone to fall victim to temptation when they land here and see lots of money. Perhaps they think the US Catholics won't miss it, or can afford it, or perhaps they feel resentful that people here have more than people where they grew up. The US Bishops should consider some form of extra monitoring on such priests.
Yes, but I wonder if like the shuffling off of child abusing priests, these priests were no longer wanted in their home countries and given a good recommendation for an assignment far away from where they had been.
That also crossed my mind...
There are priests that come here under the radar screen and are not really recommended by their superiors in their home country. There is the Polish priest who was removed from his seminary in Poland for homosexuality and was accepted into the seminary for the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri and ordained. He subsequently took over as pastor of St. Stanislaus Church in St. Louis when it left the Catholic Church and made it a place for homosexuals, transvestites, bizarre activities in which he showed his true colors. I know a Mexican priest who was removed from seminary in Mexico for homosexuality and admitted to the seminary by the same religious order here in the United States, despite the opposition of the Mexicans. Most foreign priests in the US are good ones, but there are some that are too quickly accepted here in the U.S. because of the priest shortage and the abundance of liberal and pro-homosexual religious superiors and bishops.
Poland also has a significant amount of clericalism, and from what I understand it's much worse than in America because the Church there has enjoyed prominent place in society for many years now.
A priest we know said that he believes the Church in Poland is very similar to the American Church in the 50s. There are many very holy, wonderful priests, but there are others who very much enjoy their privileged position in Polish society (which is rapidly fading because of secularization and their own arrogance/complacency/scandal). The Polish Church is still strong, but the Polish Church of John Paul II's day is not the reality now.
There may come a time when Polish people look at the Catholic Church as the Irish do now - as another villain in their historic oppression along with foreign powers.
I hope that day doesn't come, but I do think it will. It's already off to a good start. The rhetoric in Poland around abortion is also similar to how it was in Ireland before it was legalized.
😢
That is not true. The vast majority of Polish priests are superior to American priests in both their sanctity, learning, dedication, and orthodoxy. Some bad apples occur like anywhere and, unfortunately, some bad priests seek to work somewhere else when they are caught by their superiors in Poland. I would say that of the 50 or more Polish priests I have met working in the United States, the vast majority make most American priests look inferior in regards to ability and Catholic zeal.
They are also very much humble and approachable. One of the reasons is probably that priests in Poland are required to do the so-called Kolenda during Christmas season (which in Poland is December 25 to February 2) when parish priests visit all the people in their territoral parish, door to door. Though it used to be an event where nearly every priest was treated with great honors in the homes of pious Catholics, now with the growing secularization in Poland their visits are openly rejected by many, hopefully just with a polite no thank you, but probably not in all situations. That is a humbling experience few American Catholic priests ever have.
I don't know what you mean by "that is not true," but I'm not commenting on their character or their holiness.
My comment was in reference to the cultural response to priests in Poland as opposed to the U.S. (although the Polish response has changed for the worse within the past 10 years or so, but ours has been instinctively negative for quite some time).
I'd argue that American Catholic priests had some of those issues after the Spotlight scandals and the very public related issues. I mean, an American priest friend of mine told me about a time he went to a restaurant and the waiter asked him to his face if he was becoming a priest so that he could have better access to little boys. I'm not saying Polish priests don't hear that and I know the secularization there is occurring rapidly, but just like in the U.S., part of the problem is letting go of that clericalism. It isn't most priests, but there are enough bad apples to seemingly spoil their reputations, and if they don't realize that, it'll keep getting worse. Plus, the priests have enjoyed political support from PiS for a long time, and now they're out of power.
I don't see clericalism as a problem like you do, meaning the clericalism in which a priest takes charge of his parish like a good father in a family instead of relegating it to a bunch of amateur lay people. I think we have given lay people too much responsibility.
It is thanks to clericalism that the Church thrived before 1960 and now does not. I do agree with you that Poland is becoming worse, and that includes the seeping in of some priests wanting to be more modern like their Western European counterparts. I think the influence of the Catholic Church on PiS is overblown. That most of PiS politicians were prolife conservative Catholics would make them gravitate towards supporting Catholic issues, but the ridiculous restrictions PiS during COVID placed on Mass attendance and the banning of people being able to visit loved ones graves in November of 2020 shows that the party did not align themselves completely with the Church like they should have.
Before 1960 we had a very vibrant lay Catholic Action movement -- Christian Family Movement, Young Christian Workers, Catholic student, women's, peasants, labor, journalist, banking and other organizations. The Church thrived because of these efforts.
And on many matters, it is the parish priest who is the amateur, while the lay faithful have actual training, competency and experience in certain duties.
It is not about lay people participating, but about priests being in charge. A leader does not have to be an expert in everything, but he is still in charge. He can ask lay people for advice, like I asked my teenage son about buying a new computer recently.
An example of laity going too far is what happened to me when my son was going to receive Holy Communion. The local parish had an American pastor and a Polish associate pastor. The Polish people wanted First Communion for their kids in Polish and the pastor, a good and kind priest, agreed. The Polish priest wanted to prepare the kids as in Poland priests or religious sisters prepare children for the Sacraments. The pastor told the associate pastor that he would have to go through the Director of Religious Education, a lay woman. The DRE gave the whole Polish group a lecture that was so full of theological errors it made all the parents cringe. At a subsequent meeting we asked the Polish priest why can't we just have him prepare the kids. He said "I would, but the pastor is afraid of the DRE."
I took my son out of the parish and signed him up with a nearby Archdiocesan Polish language Catholic Mission which also had only 2 priests. There the associate pastor taught the kids. The entire mission, with more parishioners and Masses than my local parish had, had only 2 lay employees: the organist and a part time secretary who worked 8 hours total a week. And the priests even distributed Communion to hundreds of people each Sunday without extraordinary lay ministers. They did not need the army of lay people bossing them around. When a certain parish event came up, they asked for volunteers for that specific event and it worked great. I love good clericalism!
//The Capuchin Province of St. Mary, headquartered in New York, declined to comment on why the priest used a public defender, or whether he has yet been formally dismissed from the order.//
//The province told The Pillar it had no comment.//
About the same in my Capuchin parish after one of their friars molested parish girls. No comment on anything. Parishioners were told to their face they had no rights to any information (which is, of course true, we have no rights). They wouldn't even confirm information that came out in the court trial and seemed annoyed we followed the court proceedings, almost like we were snooping on them.
There is no way that my employer nor any of the charities whose boards I sit on would ever have missed easily verifiable background check items like a medical license, charity incorporation or college degree. Yet the NY Capuchins didn't bother to perform a meaningful background check despite all of the promises they are protecting our children and protecting our tithes.
The bottom line is that we have a Church which says they are protecting our children but will not give the laity the right to know how they are protecting our children or our tithes. In such circumstances, they should not be trusted.
Lastly, I applaud The Pillar for continuing to report on this story. Even in the Capuchin's "no comment" we have learned much.
I am truly so grateful for the Pillar's reporting on these sexual abuse cases and the like. Since so many in the clergy won't address the abuse, it seems like a vocal laity is the way forward to demanding change.
I too am grateful for the Pillar coverage. Since Church Militant shut down, there is no other US Catholic news outlet regularly covering clergy SA, theft and fraud cases. Church Militant was arguably a biased tabloid of questionable journalistic quality, but when the legit Catholic outlets refuse to cover clergy misconduct, you take what information sources are available if you want to be an informed layperson. It's disheartening that certain other "Catholic news" purveyors including a former CM staffer apparently don't think these stories should be discussed, especially if the cleric involved has prominent supporters. Some days I feel we're back in the Spotlight era.
... except the founder of CM was an absolute fraud.
But apparently very in demand on the Chelsea piers.
And on cruise ships
So the man who said he ran medical clinics, said he was a doctor, and said he was royalty now says he was abused as a child?
So much for what my grade school nuns taught me - that every priest’s mother goes straight to heaven 🤦♂️
“White, Bielecki’s attorney, argued that the abuse Bielecki allegedly experienced, along with alleged verbal abuse and violence from his mother, contributed to his fraudulent theft as a friar.”
I wish that were true!
(What your grade school nuns taught you.)
It is interesting how conservative religious orders like Miles Christi are suppressed for individual priests having been found guilty of abuse, but the Capuchins and other liberal religious orders who have a much higher percentage of abusers in their ranks are not disciplined by Pope Francis and the Vatican
Wasn’t it the founder in the Miles Christi who was the abuser? Also the legion not being suppressed tends to discredit your hypothesis. Interesting reporting by the Pillar recently that one possible reason for this was there would be too many in limbo clerics
That is true, but how do the Capuchins get away with not removing this priest from their order? There was a visitation of American seminaries ordered under Pope Benedict XVI which showed that the diocesan seminaries had fixed themselves but the religious orders had seminaries still infiltrated by homosexuals. I know for example that when I once visited a friend (who has homosexual tendencies) at his residence near the Catholic Theological Union, the seminarians for his religious order (one of the top 10 in size, but I do not want to reveal the name because of my friend) were so ridiculously effeminate and gay acting that I would have not let my teenage son even spent a night there.
I had no problems sending my teenage son to a weekend retreat on his own with Miles Christi, who are renowned for both their holy and manly priests.
The Legion is different. Though I am a big fan, let's be frank: Pope Francis' administrator of Vatican City until he retired on March 1 was Legionary Cardinal Vergez, while the man Francis named Camerlengo, meaning the man who will administer the Church when the Pope dies, is Cardinal Farrell, a former Legionary priest whose older brother, the former Secretary of the Dicastry for Christian Unity, is still a Legionary priest. Though a good order, they have a lot of clout in the Vatican that Miles Christi did not have (but MC was supported by Pope Francis' archenemy in Argentina, Archbishop Aguer of La Plata).
We don't know whether this priest is still a member of the order or not. He's using a public defender which implies he may have been removed but the order isn't saying.
Not sure I am inclined to believe such stories from a consummate teller of tales. Best for him to practice living the ascetic life behind bars; twenty years should be enough to get it right.
"It's not my fault, my past made me do it". What a poor excuse for a defense! Satan has no shame. This statement is used to justify his inability to feel remorse for his actions. The only reason for this man's sadness is that he got caught. The repercussions to the Capuchin friars is irreparable. This guy is just interested in his own self interest. In prison , he should work hard labor to pay back his debt to those he swindled.
You cannot trust anything this man claims. I know someone like this, Lies, lies and slander, blaming others for his psychopathic behaviour. Throw away the key.
I would simply look at what he did, and sentence accordingly.
Because I assume that he would simply defraud again, once he gets out of prison. It's not clear to me he is repentant of his frauds.
I am tired of those from the church (whether lay or cleric) getting lesser sentences. They know that those associated with the church are soft targets, and perhaps they should be sentenced more harshly, to discourage such behavior.
I do not feel that specific details of the sexual abuse needed to be included. I wish I had not read this article.
Thank you to the Pillar.
An investigation should also be done into his clerical supervisors, who let this criminal go rogue. Accountability is needed all the way up the chain of command.
Clearly this priest needs help. Whether he plays the blame game or others do is not important at this time. I hear the term”brother priests” and wonder what that really means. If someone is suffering,shouldn’t those around him try to help or is the GoodSamaritan story the best we can do. Maybe they didn’t know what was going on but they do now.I wonder how much support is being given him or can they hardly wait to see him imprisoned so they will be free of their “brother”. Jesus dealt with sinners like me all of the time,I wonder how He would be dealing with Father? I think I know.