Demos Shakarian is back in full authority...

Demos Shakarian is back in full authority this week as president of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, based in Costa Mesa, after the group’s board voted last Sunday in Palm Springs to absolve him of internal allegations that he accrued more financial benefits than the law allows and did not fully account for six years of travel expenses.

Shakarian, 75, placed controller Peter Taylor on “administrative leave.” Taylor had been accused by Shakarian backers in the deeply divided organization of undermining Shakarian’s credibility, which Taylor denied.

Although the board’s audit committee had informed the Internal Revenue Service last year that Shakarian had $276,000 in benefits that should have been reported as income, board members were persuaded by arguments that an outside review of company records was incomplete and possibly misleading and that the accusations arose from attempts to curtail Shakarian’s authority.

Treasurer Gerald Walker, a retired businessman in Denver, said this week that he felt “very badly about the whitewashing of . . . Demos without any documentation. He will still have to answer to God and to the IRS, not necessarily in that order.”

Mark Bellinger, a Shakarian aide, had with him in Palm Springs a box of documents and receipts that he said accounted for all but $6,000 of $108,000 in travel expenses. Bill Morretti, a former tax accountant from Stanton who was at the meeting, said he examined the contents and was satisfied that Shakarian was wronged.

Difficult times are still ahead for the pioneering Pentecostal organization. A budget of $5.5 million was proposed for 1989, but the executive committee imposed a ceiling of $4 million--the approximate income during 1988.

CONFERENCES

Father Dennis Mikulanis, the interfaith and ecumenical officer for the San Diego Catholic Diocese, is expected to become only the second Catholic priest ever elected president of the San Diego County Ecumenical Conference when the organization holds its 19th General Assembly on Sunday. Mikulanis, the lone nominee for the two-year post, will succeed the Rev. Faith Conklin, a United Methodist minister. The 2 p.m. meeting of the predominantly Protestant conference will be at Chula Vista First United Methodist Church, and the Rev. Ellis Casson, pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in San Diego, will be the principal speaker.

More than 500 lay and rabbinical delegates will take part next weekend in a five-state regional convention for Reform Judaism’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Tennis Club. The three-day, biennial meeting begins Friday and includes a Saturday night banquet address by Albert Vorspan of New York, national senior vice president of the organization.

ACTION

After five months of operation and with the help of federal grants, the Hope-Net project of the Mid-Wilshire Parish has established nine food distribution centers in that area of Los Angeles. The Mid-Wilshire Parish is a cooperative organization of 12 churches and one Jewish temple. Project director Larry W. Hixon, a Disciples minister whose office is on the third floor of St. James Episcopal Church, said Hope-Net also plans to provide housing for the homeless.

Jewish “para-chaplains” for nursing homes in the Los Angeles area will be trained in a course given on eight successive Thursday nights, starting Feb. 9, at the Jewish Federation Building, 6505 Wilshire Blvd. The program, which has already graduated and assigned 50 men and women, trains volunteers to visit nursing homes twice a month, conduct religious services, arrange holiday programs and visit with lonely patients, according to Rabbi Martin Ryback, chaplaincy director for the Southern California Board of Rabbis.