The Annual Appeal was launched in our diocese this weekend, as it has been or will be in many other dioceses, with a sound-tracked video at every Mass and a step-by-step walk-through of the completion of pledge cards. While I sympathize with the committee that came up with that tedious line-by-line approach, it doesn’t wear well on adults.
Instead, maybe give us an honest accounting of where our money has gone, the steps taken to protect and report it, and a picture of the accounting best practices that assure us the money is spent as intended. Maybe that, instead of, “On the first line, write your name. We’ll wait.”
Maybe tell us about the engagement of independent auditors to oversee the implementation of proper internal controls and the production of attested financial statements. An audit is so effective a tool that when Cardinal George Pell, as Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, contracted with PriceWaterhouseCoopers to audit the Vatican accounts, false charges were advanced to force him back to Australia. Needless to say, the audit was cancelled, Pell was whisked away from Rome to a sham trial, and he was effectively neutralized as a financial reformer.
No substantial business
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