Timothy Cardinal Dolan is dodging questions about what he’s done with cash he received from former West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield, who left his post in disgrace amid allegations he sexually harassed seminarians and improperly spent church money.
Over the 13 years Bransfield served as head of the West Virginia diocese, he gave $350,000 in gifts to high-ranking Catholic officials ? money the diocese ultimately reimbursed him for, according to a report from The Washington Post last week.
“It’s incredibly problematic,” Zach Hiner, head of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said of the money. “It seems as if was done to curry favor, or in the hopes that people who know something about you won’t do anything about it.”
Bransfield’s lavish living and generous gifts to fellow clergy were particularly egregious in West Virginia, Hiner said, because of the extreme poverty in the state.
He pointed out that as a tax-exempt nonprofit, the church is required to spend its money on charity — not presents for those with influence and power.
One of the recipients of Bransfield’s largesse was Dolan, one of the most influential Catholic leaders in the country and former head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Other church luminaries on the receiving end of Bransfield’s giving include former Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl; Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, and Raymond Cardinal Burke, who sits on the Vatican Supreme Court. Lori, who’s been heading an investigation into Bransfield, at first omitted his and other clerics’ names in his written report to the Vatican.
Dolan has remained silent on the matter for five days ? even as Catholic peers like Lori said they would return the money.
A spokesman for Dolan refused to answer questions about how much money he received from Bransfield, when he received it and what he did with it. Instead, he sent a written statement with very little in the way of specifics.
“As you probably know, the report you are referring to was undertaken by Archbishop Lori, archbishop of Baltimore, who is serving as the apostolic administrator of the Wheeling-Charleston [West Virginia] Diocese, on behalf of the Holy See,” Dolan’s spokesman Joseph Zwilling wrote. “Cardinal Dolan has not heard yet from Archbishop Lori or the Holy See, but hopes to speak with Archbishop Lori about the matter.”
Lori and Bransfield did not immediately return requests for comment.
