Firing of Diocesan Controller May Have Delayed Inquiry

Adair Allen Simmons, accused of embezzling $43,000 from Catholic Charities of Orange County, might have been charged months earlier if the diocese had not dismissed a veteran controller who first suspected that something was amiss, according to the Orange County district attorney’s investigation and church officials.

A report prepared by an investigator for the district attorney’s office says that on Aug. 19, 1986, controller James Cranham gave “Simmons a memo about some of these questionable expenses and requested some backup documentation. This was the first indication that there was a problem with Simmons’ use of the Catholic Charities money.”

Fired in Less Than an Hour

Less than an hour after he put that memo on Simmons’ desk, Cranham was fired, after 25 years of employment with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange.

Msgr. Michael Driscoll, chancellor of the Diocese of Orange, said he and the late Bishop William R. Johnson had decided several months earlier to dismiss Cranham as part of an effort to streamline and computerize the diocese. Cranham had been notified of the pending dismissal, Driscoll said.

The chancellor said that the timing of the memo’s delivery and Cranham’s termination was a coincidence and a surprise to him.

When Cranham was finally let go, Driscoll said, it was not “because there was going to be some investigation” resulting from the memo.

Driscoll, whose duties included overseeing Catholic Charities before he was recently promoted, described Cranham as “a very fine man, a detailed, meticulous accountant” and “as honest as the day is long.”

Before leaving the building that Aug. 19, Cranham made photocopies of the disputed checks written by Simmons on the Catholic Charities account. Most of the money went directly or indirectly to a troubled 19-year-old man with whom Simmons “maintained a relationship both professional and social,” the district attorney’s report said. Simmons, 37, represented himself as a priest to the young man, the report said, counseling him and hearing his confession.

Because Cranham’s dismissal is the subject of negotiations between his attorney and diocese lawyers, some of those involved would not allow use of their names.

When Simmons was hired by Catholic Charities and later appointed executive director of Catholic Charities in 1985, no one checked his work or his educational credentials, church officials said this week. Simmons--who wore a clerical collar--claimed that with two other men he was hoping to establish a religious order called the Franciscan Brothers of Mary, Queen of Peace.

After the loss of the funds was verified in late 1986, an official of Catholic Charities found that much of Simmons’ resume was a fabrication. The same official discovered business cards identifying him as a priest.

For some of the time Simmons headed Catholic Charities he lived at the bishop’s residence in Orange after the other two men who shared the interest in establishing a new religious order left the area.

“We had known him,” Driscoll said of Simmons. “He was a friend of ours.”

When Simmons moved in, the ailing Johnson was in the last weeks of his life, and Simmons “helped care for the bishop,” Driscoll said.

Johnson died in July of 1986, but Simmons was invited to remain in residence.

Cranham was one of those who came to believe that Simmons was not what he claimed to be, according to a source close to the former controller.

Although Driscoll approved Cranham’s firing, the former controller went to Driscoll a month later with his memo, which included photocopies of the questionable checks, and explained his suspicions in detail.

According to Driscoll, this was the first time he had seen the memo. When he confronted Simmons with it the next morning, Simmons “denied that he had ever seen it,” Driscoll said.

After his meeting with Driscoll, a source close to Cranham said, the former controller waited and “hoped for reinstatement and vindication.”

But Cranham was neither reinstated nor vindicated. According to the district attorney’s report, in early October Driscoll contacted the diocese’s accountant and asked him to investigate the matter.

Attempted Suicide

Over a four-day period in mid-December, 1986, after completion of the audit, Simmons attempted suicide, resigned as executive director of Catholic Charities and “admitted use of Catholic Charities funds for his own non-business related expenses,” the district attorney’s report said. It was then that Simmons was asked to leave the bishop’s residence.

On Jan. 15, after conferring with the board of Catholic Charities and, by telephone, with newly appointed Bishop Norman F. McFarland in Reno, Driscoll contacted the Orange County district attorney’s office and requested their assistance in investigating the case.

An arrest warrant was issued for Simmons on Feb. 26, and Simmons returned voluntarily to face arraignment March 3.

Simmons, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge, is free on $10,000 bond. Through his attorney, he has declined all comment on the case.

McFarland, who was installed as Bishop of Orange on Feb. 24, has since made a number of personnel changes in a reorganization of diocesan officials. On March 2 he announced that Driscoll would become vicar general--the No. 2 position in the diocese--on March 16.

The present vicar general, Auxiliary Bishop John T. Steinbock, is scheduled to be installed on March 31 as bishop of the Diocese of Santa Rosa.

McFarland named Father John Urell, his secretary, to succeed Driscoll as chancellor, considered the No. 3 position in the diocese. Urell, who also served as Bishop Johnson’s secretary and vice chancellor, was one of the few spectators in the municipal courtroom where Simmons was arraigned Tuesday. He said outside the courtroom that he would remain as McFarland’s secretary.

The bishop said that Driscoll’s appointment as vicar general was a promotion after serving 10 successful years as chancellor and that the move had nothing to do with his handling of the Simmons case.

While the post of vicar general is technically second only to the presiding bishop--clearly so when it is held by an auxiliary bishop--it is the chancellor who usually exercises more direct administrative authority, according to church sources.

“In this country, functionally speaking, the chancellor has tended to be the executive secretary, the chief of staff,” said one church observer.

Urell is expected to exercise stronger control of the organizations within his authority, including Catholic Charities. He declined comment Tuesday on the case or the appointments and referred all questions to McFarland.

McFarland, who brought with him to Orange County a reputation for stringent and public accountability for diocesan finances, said Thursday that he considers the Catholic Charities matter an isolated incident.

“I have no reason to think that the diocese is in anything but a sound financial state,” McFarland said, adding that “it’s going to take me a while to make a complete study of where we are.”