Supreme Court declines to intervene in Peter’s Pence fraud lawsuit against US bishops

WASHINGTON D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a petition from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) allowing a lawsuit to move forward that alleges the bishops misled Catholics into believing their millions of dollars in donations to the papal charity, Peter’s Pence, would be used to help the poor.

The suit was filed in January 2020 in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island on behalf of David O’Connell, a parishioner at Sacred Heart Church in East Providence. It claims the American bishops “actively” misled Catholics into believing their millions of dollars in donations to the collection would be used to help “victims of war, oppression, natural disaster, or disease,” when in fact much of the money was funneled into private investments, such as Hollywood’s sexually explicit Elton John biopic Rocketman, “luxury condominium developments,” and “hefty, multi-million dollar commissions” to fund managers. 

O’Connell sued the USCCB, seeking discovery into the donors to, uses of, and internal deliberations about Peter’s Pence. He also requested a refund for himself and sought to initiate a class action suit on behalf of millions of donors nationwide.

“USCCB must come clean and give back the money it took from well-intentioned people who thought they were giving urgently-needed funds to help the destitute around the world,” said lead attorney Marc Stanley in 2020, when the lawsuit was launched.

“It’s regrettable and tragic that such a trusted and well-respected organization has been taking advantage of the generosity of Catholic donors.”

The complaint cited a December 2019 Wall Street Journal report stating that for “at least the past five years, only about 10 percent of the money collected – more than €50 million was raised in 2018 – has gone to the sort of charitable causes featured in advertising for the collection.”

When the bishops moved to dismiss under the Religion Clauses’ church autonomy doctrine, both the district court and the D.C. Circuit refused.  

In their petition to the Supreme Court, attorneys for the USCCB argued that “the state interference required to adjudicate this lawsuit – which involves demands for lists of papal donors, accounting for the Pope’s use of Peter’s Pence, and disclosure of the bishops’ internal communications with the Holy See about Peter’s Pence – would violate the church autonomy doctrine.”

The Supreme Court’s decision means that the suit will continue to progress through lower courts.   

O’Connell’s suit came after a series of bombshell reports found that, far from being used by the Holy Father as a means to provide emergency assistance to those in need because of natural disaster, war, oppression, and disease, the vast majority of the donated funds were funneled into investments and to “defray Vatican administrative expenses.”

In October 2019, the Italian newspaper L’Espresso reported that “secret internal Vatican investigative reports” showed most of Peter’s Pence funds had been “diverted into ‘reckless speculative operations,’ with 77 percent of the collections” – “roughly $560 million” – channeled to the Swiss investment company Credit Suisse, the complaint detailed.

The newspaper also reported that a high-ranking Vatican official asked Italian financier Raffaele Mincione to invest $200 million of the collection, and that Mincione used the money to buy real estate in London “for a luxury apartment development” through a fund he managed, stated the complaint.

When the investment didn’t yield the expected returns, the Vatican pulled out of the fund and bought the property, and Mincione made $170 million on the deal, according to sources cited in the document.

Pope Francis responded a few weeks later, stating that the fact that the Vatican invests the money shouldn’t bother anyone, according to Catholic News Service (CNS), the complaint stated.

“The sum of Peter’s Pence arrives and what do I do? Put it in a drawer? No, that’s bad administration. I try to make an investment,” CNS quoted the late pope as saying.

That was followed by a further bombshell report in December when Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera broke the news that $1 million of Peter’s Pence donations had been invested in the Elton John biopic, Rocketman, and more than $3.6 million in the movie Men in Black: International, the complaint stated.

Moreover, Corriere della Sera reported that “millions of dollars” had been sunk into the Malta-based investment company Centurion Global Fund run by Italian financier Enrico Crasso, “who received ‘millions of euros in commissions’ while losing 4.61 percent of the fund (approximately two million euros) by the end of 2018.”

Nonetheless, a lot is at stake not only for the U.S. Catholic bishops, but for other religious groups as well, including Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims who filed amicus briefs in support of the USCCB.

“Scrutinizing such practices in this way undercuts religious organizations’ ability to decide for themselves matters that the First Amendment commits to their authority. If civil courts are permitted to subject the USCCB to the burdens of litigation in this case to adjudicate the inherently religious message on which it is based, the religious liberty shared by all faith groups is threatened,” a coalition of religious groups claimed in their brief.

“If the Catholic Mass is not safe from government intrusion, courts next may make themselves superintendents of the Jewish Tefillah, the Adventist Sabbath, the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, the Muslim Jum’ah, and all other faiths’ worship services,” the brief asserted.

A brief filed on behalf of the bishops by a group of major religious organizations stated, “Intrusion into a religious organization’s finances invades the sacred inner core of that organization’s ability to carry out its religious mission, both now and in perpetuity.”

The U.S. bishop’s attorneys previously warned that “allowing the case to go forward would threaten virtually every faith tradition in the nation with class action lawsuits whenever members are unhappy about how the church explained or spent their offerings.” 

“If parishioners can claw back a religious offering they voluntarily gave, every religious offering to a house of worship, and every decision made by a faith-based charity, is in jeopardy.”