Lawsuit shows rift over Catholic school fundraising

A charity dedicated to raising money for scholarships to Catholic schools in Connecticut, founded 39 years ago by then-Archbishop John Whelan, has fared so well that it hands out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to needy students and holds around $16 million in dozens of dedicated donor funds.

Despite its success, the Foundation for the Advancement of Catholic Schools Inc. finds itself in a mortal battle with the Hartford Archdiocese and Archbishop Leonard P. Blair. The foundation’s chairman — a devout Catholic who never imagined he’d say such things — accuses Blair of trying to usurp the money, refusing to discuss the dispute in good faith and putting parochial schools at risk in Hartford, New Haven and Litchfield counties.

After years of simmering friction and worse, the nonprofit foundation filed a lawsuit last October in Superior Court in Hartford, naming Blair, five high-ranking priests and the chief financial officer of the 139-parish archdiocese, which includes all three counties in central and northwestern Connecticut.

The legal action seeks to stop Blair from appointing board members of the foundation in a way the foundation says violates its bylaws. While that’s a narrow question, the issue is clearly deeper than a dispute over governance. It’s creating a fissure in the archdiocese and threatening progress at the Catholic schools just as they’re making real strides in enrollment coming out of the pandemic.

Things have only grown more tense since the lawsuit.

Blair and the archdiocese in April had the foundation delisted as an official Catholic organization under the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. A West Hartford parish, under Blair’s control, filed a lawsuit seeking the claw back $1 million it gave the foundation to manage for its school several years ago.

Then the topper: In May, a top diocese official ordered the foundation to vacate its longtime offices at the archdiocese’s pastoral center in Bloomfield, formerly the St. Thomas Seminary.

“In the middle of our busiest time, he sends us a letter and tells is to get out of the building through his chancellor,” said Brian Giantonio, a Newington resident and attorney who is president, CEO and chairman of the foundation. “All he did was keep pushing things off, pushing it off…. He wanted to separate from us.”

‘He wants our money’

Giantonio and the lawsuit lay out a history of what the foundation describes as stonewalling by Blair, starting in December of 2013, soon after Blair succeeded former Archbishop Henry Mansell. Giantonio names ten actions the foundation says Blair has taken to the detriment of the charity — starting with Blair declining to serve as chairman, a role the previous archbishops held.

“The core of the dispute is, he wants our money. He wants to put people on the board who will vote to merge or liquidate,” Giantonio told me in a recent interview. “We believe that these ten actions that he’s taken have really been driven by his desire to drive us out of business.”

The foundation moved to depose Blair and others as part of the lawsuit this spring. That action was postponed as the archdiocese filed a motion to have the matter dismissed. That motion is now pending before the court.

In response to the charges, a spokesman said the archdiocese defended Blair’s stewardship of the parochial and private Catholic schools, which had more than 9,000 K-12 students in 2020-21 and have seen a 17 percent jump in 9th grade enrollment for the incoming classes.

“Archbishop Blair’s devotion to Catholic education is embodied in the vision statement of the recently reorganized Archdiocesan Center for Catholic Education and Formation: ‘to collaborate with the faithful of the Archdiocese of Hartford so that hearts are ignited, minds are enlightened, and lives are transformed in vibrant communities centered in Christ.’,” the statement issued by spokesman David Elliott said.

“While the Archdiocese does not comment on specific claims in pending litigation, the notion that the Archdiocese is seeking to use FACS funds for other purposes is false. During the mediation process, the Archdiocese offered and agreed to allow FACS to separate and keep virtually all their funds and continue operations.

“The children of our Archdiocese deserve better than the dispute that the officers of FACS have provoked with the Archdiocese and Archbishop Blair.”

Years of friction

The heart of the legal case is whether Blair has the right under Connecticut law, which regulates nonprofits, to name board members to the foundation who are not presented to him as nominees by the foundation’s board. That was always the practice under previous archbishops, the lawsuit states, and that process is spelled out in the bylaws.

As tensions grew between the archdiocese and the foundation, Blair in 2016 created a fundraising arm with a broader mission of sustaining the archdiocese, known as the Hartford Bishops’ Foundation. He brought in an executive director who, that August, “told FACS Executive Director Cynthia Basil Howard... to stay out of his way or FACS would be ‘collateral damage,’” the lawsuit states.

That executive director, John Lafromboise, “also told Ms. Howard that the HBF was going to raise $150 million in the Hartford market and that when the HBF was done there would be nothing left for FACS,” the lawsuit said.

Lafromboise later apologized, the lawsuit said, “but the underlying conflict between FACS and the HBF was not resolved, and continued to grow.”

Lafromboise is no longer listed as an officer at the Hartford Bishops’ Foundation and I could not reach him to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit. The archdiocese statement said the two foundations do not compete against one another.

Giantonio and others on the side of the foundation say Blair from the start of his tenure wanted little to do with the foundation, except to set up roadblocks. Blair has repeatedly ignored their requests to meet to work out the dispute, they said, echoing the lawsuit. And when he did agree, for example, to not replace foundation board members, he later reneged on that promise, the lawsut charged.

Blair and the other five named defendants are exofficio members of the foundation board. They have not attended board meetings since early 2020, Giantonio said, denying the foundation a legal quorum it needs to conduct business.

Elliott, the archdiocese spokesman, said Blair has supported the foundation.

“Archbishop Blair has championed it for years, as evidenced by his unwavering vocal support for the Foundation and in hosting numerous St. Patrick’s Day and Columbus Day fundraising breakfasts. Sadly, FACS’s officers have become increasingly preoccupied with matters of organizational bureaucracy, including filing the October 2021 lawsuit personally naming the Archbishop. It is disappointing that the leadership of this great foundation has chosen this divisive course.”

‘He’s trying to harm the children’

Clearly, this battle never should have advanced as far as it has. It’s reasonable to believe the Archbishop could have ended a purely internal squabble that could prove so destructive, before it came to lawsuits and public recriminations.

The archdiocese’s offer in mediation — which was supposed to confidential, the foundation said this week after the archdiocese revealed it to me — is unacceptable because it would require the assets of the foundation to go to the archdiocese in the event the foundation were to end operations.

“This has been gutwrenching for every single one of us. We did not want to do this,” Giantonio told me. “We begged him to work it out privately, a family discussion...He refused. Every step he’s taken has been to harm us.”

Giantonio, a member of the recently merged Annunciation Parish in Newington, added, “More importantly, he’s trying to harm the children who are going to his schools.”

That’s a powerful charge coming from a member of the flock — one the archdiocese rebuffed.

“The Archbishop will continue to ensure that families who seek Catholic education for their children in the Archdiocese of Hartford have that opportunity, regardless of their need and regardless of pressure from outside organizations,” Elliott said in the emailed statement.

The dispute appears to have hurt fundraising for the foundation, as some potential donors might be waiting it out to see what happens, fearful of angering the archbishop. The last year saw a lower-than-typical intake of about $200,000, Giantonio said, but that could be the lingering effects of the pandemic, in which events such as a St. Patrick’s Day parade fundraiser have been canceled or diminished.

Fundraising can vary widely by year for the foundation, depending on large donations and bequests.

Officials with the foundation said they remain committed to their mission. They have received an independent, nonprofit status now that they are delisted by the Catholic Church. And they’re looking for office space, though the three-person paid staff (Giantonio and other board members are unpaid)

might not be able to vacate by June 30.

It’s unclear whether the foundation will fight the order to clear out of the archdiocese offices in the pastoral center.

“They thought they were getting rid of us,” Giantonio said. “We are stronger now…Out of this adversity, we have gained a greater strength.”