the gang that couldn't shoot straight

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 16, 2007

The hits just keep on coming for the hapless Boston archdiocese. The latest is a report on how poorly archdiocesan officials handled the sale of parishes that were closed.

The highlight (or lowlight, if you prefer): a case in which a quick-witted investor bought a parish plant from the archdiocese for $850,000, and sold it three weeks later to an Evangelical group that paid $2.65 million. It turns out that archdiocesan officials knew the Evangelical group was interested, but didn't want to let them have the building. But now they do have the building, and someone else has the profit. Neatly done, all around.

The current chancellor of the archdiocese, James McDonough-- who, to his credit, came on the scene after the disaster-- concedes that "there were mistakes" in the real-estate transactions. (Where have we heard that line before?) But he assures the Boston Globe that "no one here [i.e., in the chancery] benefited from those mistakes."

Nobody benefited. Thanks, but that's pretty much what we had suspected.