NATION - warning given on financial improprieties of Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann; suit against Louisiana school prayer law; other religious news

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 17, 1999

Vatican was warned about fiscal abuse, priest says

According to Santa Rosa, Calif., police reports, the diocese's chief financial officer, Msgr. Thomas Keys, warned key priests in the Santa Rosa diocese and officials of the Vatican four years ago that Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann was abusing the church's funds.

Keys, who was removed from the finance post shortly after Ziemann resigned in July, told Santa Rosa police last month that he reported fiscal abuse on four occasions to local priests and to officials in Rome. However, Keys told police that Ziemann met with seven senior priests in the diocese and told them that Keys was overly concerned. According to an investigative report into church finances made public by Santa Rosa police, Keys was later told to "get along with the bishop."

A debt in excess of $16 million has been revealed by the diocese in the months following Ziemann's resignation in the midst of a sex scandal.

Keys has refused to discuss the comment attributed to him in the police report.

The police report did not identify the priests Keys consulted except to say he advised members of the Board of Consultors and the Priests Council, both of which are made up of senior members of the diocesan clergy. Msgr. John Brenkle, who succeeded Keys as chief financial officer, said in a separate interview with police, "Some of us early on were consulted."

Suit filed to block Louisiana prayer law

The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit Dec. 3 challenging a Louisiana law they said is designed to reintroduce government-sponsored prayer in public schools.

The suit challenges both Louisiana's new school prayer law and specific practices at West Monroe High School in Ouachita Parish, including prayers broadcast over the school's intercom.

"Public schools are not Sunday schools," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "Government officials have no business interfering in the private religious lives of individuals."

The law, passed by the state legislature in June and signed by Gov. Mike Foster on July 2, amended existing law permitting "silent prayer or meditation" by striking the word silent from the statute.

In addition to challenging the law, the suit contends that two students at West Monroe have refused to participate in prayer activities, and one has been harassed and called a Satanist and devil worshipper.

"No child should be made to feel like an outsider or a second-class citizen in a public school because of his or her religious or philosophical beliefs," said Joe Cook, director of the ACLU of Louisiana.

$11 million approved private schools

In a move that is being hailed as a significant victory for students and parents in Catholic schools, Massachusetts state law-makers have approved more than $11 million for private school services in the latest state budget.

Stephen A. Perla, executive director of the Parents' Alliance for Catholic Education, one of the advocacy groups that sought the budget changes, said students in Catholic schools and the state's other private institutions will now have access to a wide range of services. These include school nurses, transportation, dual enrollment, a teacher Internet discount program and the restoration of special education programs.

"What this will mean for our students is that they will get the services they need," Perla said. "The availability of these services will enable many more parents to choose Catholic schools for their children."

Charles E. McManus, superintendent of schools in the Worcester diocese, lauded lawmakers for promoting education in all of the state's schools. "We're very happy that members of the House and Senate see the need to help out the children and parents who attend our schools," he said. "It's a significant achievement for us."

U.S. budget pays part of debt relief

The $390 billion omnibus spending bill President Clinton signed into law Nov. 29 contains $123 million for debt relief for poor countries.

That figure is far more than the Republican-controlled Congress originally planned to provide, even though it is less than a third of the $370 million Clinton had asked for in order to meet the U.S. debt relief commitment he announced in September.

The law does not fund a part of the debt relief package emerging from the 1999 Cologne Initiative of the world's top industrial nations -- a trust fund to be administered by the World Bank to enable other multilateral lending agencies, such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank, to do their part in debt forgiveness.

Despite the mixed signals the new law gives, Gerry Flood, policy adviser to the U.S. Catholic Conference International Justice and Peace Office, said, "This was a major step forward. I think we made major progress."

Of the $123 million for bilateral forgiveness of U.S. debts contained in the new law, $110 million is directed toward debt forgiveness under the Cologne Initiative -- a complex international program aimed at eventually relieving at least $70 billion of the external debt owed by the 40 or so most heavily indebted poor countries in the world to various creditors -- nations, multilateral institutions and commercial creditors.