Bishop cracks down on Catholic Charities

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- The acting bishop of St. Louis has ordered members of the board of Catholic Charities to agree to his fundraising plans or resign.

The archdiocese told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it simply wants better coordination of fundraising for Catholic organizations in the area.

Bishop Robert Hermann, in a memo to the Catholic Charities board, said that the organization had been allowed "to drift in a direction that began to work contrary to the desires of Archbishop Rigali and Archbishop Burke." Hermann became interim head of the diocese when Raymond Burke left for a position in the Vatican, while Cardinal Justin Rigali is now archbishop of Philadelphia.

The archdiocese complains that wealthy Catholics are suffering from "donor fatigue" by being approached over and over. But one critic, James Gunn, a former Catholic Charities board member, suggested that officials "want to be able to solicit people for their own purposes."

"The social ministry of the church is not nearly as important to them as their far-right conservative Catholic agenda," he said.