The Pillar provides an invaluable service to the Church, and I’m so impressed with their care and attitude in delivering bad news. I know I’m very hard on American Cannon Lawyers in particular…in my opinion they have played a remarkable role in making the laity in America think Catholic theology has been black/white and complete & that the everyday priest is a step ahead of us in holiness. That bubble burst in most countries long ago. But the Pillar guys are the good guys. And ultimately, the painful news will help the Synod on Synodality be more impactful. I’m all in on Pope Francis mission to reshape the way we think about accompanying one another and not leaving our priests or bishops off into a category of their own.
Good question - but everything is a PEOPLE business. Audit scripts are only as good as the people executing them, and maybe walking together in mission and in holiness?
It might have happened between annual audits. And this is Luxembourg. They might have different rules around auditing frequency. Scammers are very good at extracting what they want from a mark once they’ve gained their trust in a matter of weeks or months. Various arms of Caritas move significant dollar sums around fairly routinely and with some expectation of urgency as an aid relief organisation. And judging from the way that the operators were able to mask the true location of where the funds were being sent, your not dealing with the usual two-bitcoin operation targeting pensioners here, but something much more sophisticated and I would not be surprised if it’s a state-adjacent actor of some kind.
Isn’t their scope of detection both fraud and error?
Thank you Justin. A “going concern” as in “going, going, gone…”
Sounds a lot like the scam texts I get to text Amazon gift card codes to my pastor so he can distribute them on his hospital visit that evening 🤯🤯
Yeahhhh... This is more transparent/less sophisticated than I would have expected. If your phones are compromised, your email's compromised too
This could still be incompetence over malice, but it sounds incompetent, not just "wow, scams are really sophisticated now"
More money than brains. A common problem in the Catholic Church and in the U.S.
The hits just keep on coming.
Yeah, but the beat is just too hard to dance to...
The Pillar provides an invaluable service to the Church, and I’m so impressed with their care and attitude in delivering bad news. I know I’m very hard on American Cannon Lawyers in particular…in my opinion they have played a remarkable role in making the laity in America think Catholic theology has been black/white and complete & that the everyday priest is a step ahead of us in holiness. That bubble burst in most countries long ago. But the Pillar guys are the good guys. And ultimately, the painful news will help the Synod on Synodality be more impactful. I’m all in on Pope Francis mission to reshape the way we think about accompanying one another and not leaving our priests or bishops off into a category of their own.
What happened with the annual audit?
Good question - but everything is a PEOPLE business. Audit scripts are only as good as the people executing them, and maybe walking together in mission and in holiness?
It might have happened between annual audits. And this is Luxembourg. They might have different rules around auditing frequency. Scammers are very good at extracting what they want from a mark once they’ve gained their trust in a matter of weeks or months. Various arms of Caritas move significant dollar sums around fairly routinely and with some expectation of urgency as an aid relief organisation. And judging from the way that the operators were able to mask the true location of where the funds were being sent, your not dealing with the usual two-bitcoin operation targeting pensioners here, but something much more sophisticated and I would not be surprised if it’s a state-adjacent actor of some kind.
Bigger fish to reel in? Maybe the have but not in English.
Grant Thornton is the non profit's outside auditor.