BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald
by Tom Mashberg
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
In a sign of disarray inside the Archdiocese of Boston, the head of Catholic Charities and the chancery’s No. 2 bishop issued competing statements yesterday about a $56,000 donation raised by the lay reform group Voice of the Faithful.
Catholic Charities, a Cabinet-level department of the archdiocese that has its own outside 50-member board, decided to accept the money Dec. 11 after receiving a formal written offer.
Catholic Charities said it received the offer Monday from the National Catholic Community Foundation, a third-party philanthropy that channels money to Catholic causes. At the behest of VOTF, the NCCF first offered the money to the archdiocese itself. But the archdiocese, under former Archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law, had made clear its disapproval of the donation. With Law in Rome last week seeking to resign, it apparently allowed the deadline for a response to NCCF to pass without any formal response.