Capuchin: Childhood abuse ‘manifested’ in elaborate fraud

The Capuchin who pled guilty to fraud schemes says they are the result of longstanding trauma

A Franciscan friar who pleaded guilty to fraud told a judge last week that he should not be sentenced to more than two-and-a-half years in prison, because of a troubled childhood in which the friar was allegedly abused numerous times.

Fr. Pawel Bielecki, a/k/a Dr. Phaakon Sonderburg-Glucksburg. Credit: Capuchin Province of St. Mary’s

The plea came as a federal judge considers the possibility of a 20-year prison sentence for Fr. Pawel Bielecki, a Capuchin Franciscan who stole more than $500,000 in an elaborate scheme involving several invented personalities, claims of royalty, and phony Lebanese medical clinics.

Bielecki pled guilty in November to wire fraud, after federal prosecutors said the priest bilked Catholics by pretending to run fake medical clinics in Beirut, Lebanon, pretending to be a doctor, and falsely claiming direct lineage to two European royal families.

That fraud, his attorney told the court last week, was an attempt “to buy self-worth and acceptance.”

“I truly regret what I did,” Bielecki wrote in a Feb. 22 handwritten letter to federal district judge Vincent Bricetti, which was included in a sentencing memo filed March 14 by the priest’s attorney.

“I broke trust people had in me as a Franciscan friar … I take full responsibility for what I did, and it should never have happened … I failed and I am very sorry. People trusted me and I took actions far away from what [the] Gospel was teaching me. I will live with pain I caused and I hope that one day people will forgive me,” the priest added.

Bielecki, 49, wrote his letter from Westchester County Jail, where he has been incarcerated since his August 2024 arrest.

According to charging documents filed in federal court, Bielecki spent nearly a decade presenting himself as a physician, and sometimes as a member of two European royal families, in order to raise money for non-existent medical clinics he claimed to operate in war-torn Lebanon.

Prosecutors say that beginning in 2015, Bielecki, who used several aliases, “executed a scheme to defraud victims by falsely representing that he was a medical doctor who runs medical clinics in Beirut, Lebanon, in order to fraudulently obtain donations from victims.”

The priest also reportedly used crowdfunding websites to obtain donations, and appeared on several radio shows, presenting himself as either a priest or physician, and claiming direct lineage in two royal families: the Sonderburg-Glucksburg family, from which the King of Denmark descends, and the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family, from which King Charles III of the United Kingdom descends.

Among several aliases identified by federal prosecutors were “Paul HRH Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,” and “Dr. Phaakon Sonderburg-Glucksburg.”

In his own Feb. 22 letter, the priest said that he “would like to give restitution” for the $563,000 he acknowledged stealing, “once I get a job.”

But according to his attorney’s sentencing memo, Bielecki’s crimes stem from “the damaging psychological effects of his early childhood, abuse, and a life of stigma as a fatherless child” in the small Polish town in which the friar was raised.

Those factors “spun out control in the conduct that caused” his arrest, argued attorney Jane White, a public defender from the independent non-profit Federal Defenders of New York.

White’s memo claimed that Bielecki had spent his early years in a children’s home, “because his single mother could not afford to care for him.”

Bielecki, White argued, “has not yet fully dealt with his painful and traumatic past. He desperately sought praise and acceptance through creating false personas and excessive spending through his conduct in this case. His history plays an important role in the offense as his actions may be seen as attempts to buy self-worth and acceptance.”

The friar, “lost all consideration of the repercussions of these choices at a time of hopelessness while without treatment.”

The sentencing memo included an assessment of Bielecki from Angel Bosques, a social worker employed by Federal Defenders.

Bosques said that when Bielecki was a youth, he was sexually abused at least monthly for one school year “at the hands of two teachers, a woman and a man.”

“The first was the art teacher named Barbara,” Bosques said, writing that Bielecki reported to him that “Barbara” forcibly performed oral sex on him when he was “in lower school.”

At the same school, Bielecki reportedly told Bosques, a gym teacher named Henryk allegedly penetrated Bielecki digitally while he was forced to do “mundane exercises such as squats.”

Another letter included in Bielecki’s sentencing memo was written by the priest’s older sister, herself a religious sister, Sister Anna Kurysz.

Kurysz recalled a generally poor and difficult childhood, and recalled that Bielecki told her “after many years,” that he had been sexually abused by the priest who prepared him for baptism and first communion, reportedly when Bielecki was in second grade.

“When Pavel told me about it, I remembered that our mother called me at the convent in Krakow one day, very angrily, to say that the priest who baptized Pavel was removed from his convent in Przemysl and could no longer celebrate Mass or the sacraments. But when I received the call from my mother, I didn't pay attention to it because at that time, I didn't know the priest did so much damage to my brother.”

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.

“He sees now how his trauma manifested itself in the elaborate personas he made, of a doctor, surgeon, a descendant of a royal family and selfless humanitarian. His spending and false portrayals of himself were wrongful, misguided attempts to fill a lifelong void,” White argued.

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That Bielecki’s attorney is a public defender would seem to come as a surprise to some observers, given his putative membership in the Capuchin order. And while Bielecki’s sentencing memo contained a few letters of support from friends and his sister, it did not include any letter of support from his provincial superior any other Capuchin, or indeed any priest or ecclesiastical official, despite that priests convicted of theft often include such a letter in their sentencing memos..

Robert Warren is a professor of accounting at Radford University, and an expert in theft and fraud in ecclesiastical contexts. Warren told The Pillar that, within his scope of research, “This may be the first case where a religious priest, brother, or sister did not receive written support from their order.”

On the whole, Warren said it was remarkable that Bielecki included relatively few letters of support in his sentencing memo.

“I have seen literally a hundred letters of support. In this case, Bielecki only filed three with the Court from his sister, an old high school friend, and a former parishioner couple. In 30 years as a friar, I would expect to see hundreds of letters from those families he helped by baptizing their children, witnessing their marriages, burying their parents and grandparents, and forgiving their sins. This may lead one to speculate on how zealously Bielecki performed his priestly duties.”

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. It is not clear whether Bielecki had disclosed to the province his allegations of abuse before he was arrested last year.

In September, a spokesperson for the province confirmed that the priest’s faculties had been rescinded, and that the province was “working with its superiors in Rome to address Fr. [Pawel]’s status as a member of the Capuchin Order.”

The province initially referred Bielecki’s case to federal prosecutors, after an internal investigation found that Bielecki had been dishonest about his daily activities, “misrepresented his background and academic credentials, had been making false representations to raise money for overseas charitable projects that did not exist, and used our headquarters and our other offices as conduits for some of the funds raised,” according to a provincial statement.

Because the theft occurred while Bielecki was in active provincial ministry, The Pillar asked the province whether it had plans to make restitution to victims, and whether the theft had changed anything in the province with regard to the supervision of friars. The province told The Pillar it had no comment.

Warren told The Pillar that decisions from the Capuchin province are likely to impact Bielecki’s sentencing.

“In almost all of the cases of financial fraud by religious priests, brothers, or sisters, the order compensates the victims. For instance, when two Little Brothers of the Poor of St. Francis embezzled around $800,000 from the archdiocesan school at which they worked, their order sold a piece of real property to make restitution. Not so in this case. By not compensating the victims, the Capuchins open Bielecki to a more severe sentence,” Warren told The Pillar.

Bielecki is one of several Polish clerics to be arrested for financial crimes while serving in ministry in the United States. Warren told The Pillar it is possible the priest could be deported after serving a criminal sentence.

For his part, Bielecki told the court that during his incarceration — no matter how long he is sentenced — that he “would like to be a spiritual guide to prisoners in need so we can all learn from my mistakes.”

“I hope God and people will forgive me what I did.”