Bishop Bad Boy

During more than a decade in which the diocese and the Scrip Center were joined at the hip, the man who held the corporation's purse strings was its president and CEO, Keys, who is also widely credited with getting it off the ground. At the same time he ran NSC, Keys also controlled the diocese's money, serving not only as vicar-general but as finance director, giving him the kind of clout that some say approached even that of the bishops he served.

"There's never been any doubt in my mind that Keys was the real player when it came to the money, not Ziemann," says Bob Coyle Jr., a Fresno businessman whose late father was a partner with Keys in developing the scrip idea. John van der Zee, author of a book about the Santa Rosa scandal called Agony in the Garden, agrees. "Ziemann is a very complex character, a man with great gifts and weaknesses," he says. "But as far as the money goes, I don't think he was paying attention to what was going on around him." Keys declined to be interviewed for this article, as did the Scrip Center's current CEO, David C. Carrithers.

A native of Ireland who came to the diocese in 1970 and quickly climbed the administrative ladder, Keys was the mastermind behind merging diocesan funds in a single account. It was this so-called "Consolidated Account," which critics say was tailor-made for commingling with funds from the Scrip Center, that collapsed under the weight of what the diocese's auditors say was unbridled (and apparently unmonitored) spending during the waning months of Ziemann's tenure. A few weeks before Levada went to Ukiah to meet with the assembled priests, auditors delivered some disturbing news: The account was empty.

If criminal acts were to blame, it was not for authorities to find out. As Levada conducted parish hall meetings around the diocese, his forget-and-move-on approach received an increasingly cool reception from Catholics angry that money they had donated for schools and parishes had vanished. Even his priests were agitated. Several dozen clerics signed a letter asking the archbishop "to tell our people the total story about what happened throughout [Ziemann's] administration," including "the role of the bishop, the vicar-general, the diocesan finance committee, the administrative staff and the scrip center in creating our present situation." But according to one of those priests, who spoke with SF Weekly on condition of anonymity, there was never a satisfying answer.

"The whole thing was swept under the rug," he says. "Eventually people go on with their lives and stop asking questions."

Among the curious were investigators from the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office. "It was, at the least, an atrocious example of malfeasance, worthy of a made-for-TV movie," recalls prosecutor Gary Medvigy. "But it would have taken a federal task force to figure out all the intricate financial dealings of the diocese. It was beyond the scope of what we could comfortably investigate locally." His former boss, Mike Mullens, who was DA at the time, says the manner in which a bishop's authority is structured within the church presents problems for investigators. "Within certain limits, a bishop can pretty much do anything he wants [with money]," Mullens says. "There's no fraud if you have the ability to use funds any way you wish." He was convinced that without the full cooperation of diocesan officials, he says, "we couldn't prove a case." Asked if he believes those officials leveled with him, he replies bluntly, "No."

One question that kept popping up during Levada's barnstorm of the diocese was who'd pay for future sex-abuse claims. The reassuring answer, provided by diocesan spokesmen, was that the diocese had procured insurance coverage for that through the Ordinary Mutual Insurance Co. But those officials didn't mention everything they knew about the insurer, even as they told Ziemann's former subjects that their money would no longer be doled out to make sex-abuse lawsuits go away.

Ordinary Mutual was incorporated in Vermont in 1987, the same year the Scrip Center came into existence. But it's a self-insurance program, and its members consist solely of Catholic churches in California, Arizona, and Idaho. According to reports on file with Vermont insurance officials, Ordinary Mutual and the Scrip Center had something else in common. From 1993 until the end of 1999 -- including when Levada hit the road to clean up after Ziemann -- Ordinary Mutual's president was none other than Monsignor Thomas J. Keys.

---

G. Patrick Ziemann's pedigree alone might have marked him for clerical stardom.

One of eight children in an old-money Pasadena family headed by a prominent Catholic lawyer, he grew up in a home where it wasn't extraordinary for an archbishop to be a dinner guest. His father, J. Howard Ziemann, was a graduate of Santa Clara University with a law degree from Georgetown. Active in Catholic affairs, he served on a variety of charitable boards and was appointed to the Superior Court bench.