Marist Brothers handing back control of St Patrick's Church Hill after over a hundred years of control over cashflow and assets, refusing to provide any accounting - Parish Priest Michael Whelan will not say how Church resources have been used to finance charities linked to him

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

                                                                                 

 Marist Brothers who have controlled St Patrick's Church Hill's cashflow for decades, and have had charge of the millions in assets owned by the Archdiocese Of Sydney that comprise the Church , will be leaving the Church in January after over a hundred  years of management control.  Led by Parish Priest Michael Whelan, they do so  without providing the faithful with any accounting of how the cash was spent, and the assets utilized.

Fr Michael Whelan, the parish priest was asked by this writer (who is among the faithful who has contributed to the take) about St Patrick's resources (in cash and kind) being diverted to charities associated with Fr Whelan. His response ,in writing, was to simply  declare:

  "St Patricks is part of the Roman Catholic Church ''.

He says so despite i  in fact being requirement of Canon Law that parishes provide an annual accounting of what was received, and how it was spent.

The Archdiocese Of Sydney, led now by Archbishop Anthony Fisher does not seem interested in any accounting, and even if it is accounts have not been made public. That is not unexpected, for  under Fisher the Archdiocese is being increasingly run like an association of  family and friends, funded by the faithful. A query raised a few years ago led to what might be described as an electronic  excommunication, with this writer's email address blocked for some five years. 

END