KISS OF DEATH

For the past couple of weeks I have watched with interest the deification of Father Bob Maguire. The people’s priest. The Mother Teresa of South Melbourne. The media savvy preacher didn’t need a PR firm. Some people at 3AW and the Herald Sun fell over each other to do that for him. And why not? He’s done a lot of work for the poor and homeless and hundreds of supporters turned up for his 75th birthday Mass.

The Catholic Archbishop Dennis Hart blew out the candles a little early when he asked Maguire for the obligatory resignation letter on reaching 75 and he also raised the uncomfortable issue of church funds.

The Archbishop said the parish was broke and he accused Bob Maguire of  ‘poor financial management’. He says he’s not absolutely certain where the money has gone – and we are talking about more than a million dollars here.

The Archbishop claimed there had been a ‘blurring of the lines’ between parish money and the personal Father Bob Maguire Foundation. I suspect Open Family is in the mix there somewhere too.

Well, I know I bit about St. Bob and money. Dirty money. I remember when he was laundering dirty money, stolen money, for a notorious paedophile priest named Vincent Kiss. For a fee, of course. Kiss was the man called the Society Priest. He was the chairman of the ANZ Bank Charity Trust. He stole more than two million dollars. Money for the needy that he spent on himself. Went to jail for eight years and is now in jail for child sex offences.

Investigators always say ‘Follow the money’.  I couldn’t work out how Kiss was getting hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the country to the Philippines where he bought a lavish house with a swimming pool and built a basketball court which he used as a honey pot to lure young victims –as young as nine and ten – into his clutches.

I found out how. Bob Maguire made a pact with the devil. Vincent Kiss would sign a cheque from the ANZ Charity account, for say $200,000, to the Open Family charity run by Maguire. Looked legit. Father Bob would deduct 10% and, no questions asked, would send the bulk of the money on to a bank in Vanuatu. Then Kiss would draw a bank cheque there and send the money on to his personal account in the Philippines.

When I challenged Maguire about his 10% of dirty money he excused it on the grounds it kept his Open Family charity funded and ultimately helped underprivileged children.  Didn’t do much for the nine and ten-year-olds abused by his friend in the Philippines.

I had another money run-in with Maguire when doing the Hinch program on Channel Seven. He was giving charity money late at night to drug addicts who came knocking on his door.  He said it was to buy food when it was really to buy heroin. I asked him hadn’t he heard of food coupons or opening an account at the nearby Coles?  He merely shrugged.

Combine that with the tawdry Vincent Kiss scandal and you may understand why I have not joined the ‘genuflect at the feet of Saint Bob’ crusade.

Monday, September 21, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009