A New York province of Capuchin Franciscans says it will fully cooperate with federal prosecutors who arrested a friar last week on charges of wire and mail fraud, with prosecutors alleging he stole hundreds of thousands in an elaborate scheme involving several invented personalities, claims of royalty, and phony Lebanese medical clinics.
After Fr. Pawel Bielecki, 48, was arrested Aug. 17, the Capuchin province of St. Mary said it had reported suspicious behavior to federal prosecutors, and was not involved in his scheme to defraud U.S. Catholics out of close to $1 million.
“The Capuchin Franciscan Friars are a worldwide order of Catholic priests and brothers, and we firmly believe that no one should violate the public trust -- first and foremost, a member of the Church. This is why our Province reported Fr. Paul’s suspicious behavior to the U.S. Attorney’s office and is continuing to fully cooperate with them,” the province said in a statement sent to The Pillar August 21.
According to charging documents filed in federal court, Bielecki spent nearly a decade presenting himself as a physician, and sometimes as a member of two European royal families, in order to raise money for non-existent medical clinics he claimed to operate in war-torn Lebanon.
Prosecutors say that beginning in 2015, Bielecki, who used several aliases, “executed a scheme to defraud victims by falsely representing that he was a medical doctor who runs medical clinics in Beirut, Lebanon, in order to fraudulently obtain donations from victims.”
Because many of those donations, amounting to more $650,000, were sent through the mail, the priest is facing the prospect of federal prison time for the crime of mail fraud.
Prosecutors say that the priest also used crowdfunding websites to obtain donations, and appeared on several radio shows, presenting himself as either a priest or physician, and claiming direct lineage in the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Sonderburg-Glucksburg royal families.
Among several aliases identified by federal prosecutors were “Paul HRH Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,” and “Dr. Phaakon Sonderburg-Glucksburg.”
The King of Belgium descends from a line of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha royal family, as does King Charles III of the United Kingdom. The King of Denmark descends from a line of the Sonderburg-Glucksburg royal family.
In some cases, the priest appeared on New York area radio shows while pretending that he was calling from Lebanese medical clinics, but was actually calling from the New York area.
In August 2020, the priest claimed that he had been seriously injured in a large explosion which rocked Beirut, and said that his clinics had been badly damaged, while prosecutors said the priest was actually in New York City on the date of the explosion, and did not even leave the United States between December 2019 and April 2022.
Prosecutors also claimed that the priest had faked several prestigious academic and medical degrees, even apparently convincing his religious province that he completed medical school as a friar, which was not true.
Members of the Capuchin province have told The Pillar in recent days that they believed Bielecki was actually a physician until the extent of his fraud was revealed.
According to Fr. Robert Abbatiello, provincial superior of the New York and New England St. Mary Capuchin province, Bielecki first joined the Capuchins when he was 18, becoming a member of the Krakow province in his native Poland. The friar became a priest in 2001.
In 2011, he was sent to study in New York and, at the request of his own province, Bielecki began staying in a friary of the St Mary Province. He formally transferred to the province in 2019.
“Until recently, there was no reason to suspect the veracity of his credentials,” Abbatiello said.
But in the spring of 2023, when questions came up about Bielecki’s employment — he apparently told the province he had a non-religious job which it was unable to verify — provincial leaders began digging into the friar’s daily activities.
A “vigorous internal investigation … revealed Fr. Paul was not who he represented himself to be, misrepresented his background and academic credentials, had been making false representations to raise money for overseas charitable projects that did not exist, and used our headquarters and our other offices as conduits for some of the funds raised.”
The province referred the matter to federal prosecutors after their investigation revealed wrongdoing, according to charging documents.
Indeed, when he began his fraudulent scheme in 2015, prosecutors say that Bielecki initially asked people to write cheques to the St. Mary religious province, with “Fr. Paul Bielecki’s Mission” on the memo line. It is not clear whether the money sent to the province was given to Bielecki.
But in 2021, Bielecki began using a non-profit entity he established to receive donations — he solicited money using crowdfunding websites, advertised his fundraising in parish bulletins and posts on parish Facebook pages.
The priest also gave talks to raise money “for his purported clinics … at Church Masses and other Church events,” federal prosecutors say.
Prosecutors say that Bielecki used the money to pay for plastic surgery at a liposuction clinic, a $300 per month gym membership, expensive vacations and meals, and to pay credit card debt.
If convicted, he could face up to 40 years in prison.
While the Capuchin province say it is cooperating, it has not said whether the priest will face the prospect of a canonical trial, but it is possible that he could eventually face the prospect of laicization and expulsion from his religious order.
Canonical penal proceedings often take place after a priest has faced criminal trial, in order to avoid mixing canonical and civil cases.
A spokesperson for the Capuchins told The Pillar Aug. 21 that “the province is exploring the appropriate and necessary canonical measures” in the case.
While only a very small percentage of priests have been accused of committing financial crimes, documented examples of fraud, theft, and embezzlement in the Church are on the rise in recent years.
A scholarly article published last year on financial misconduct among American clergy found that priests who steal are often motivated by resentment, envy, and a desire to cover up for other moral lapses.
Researchers Robert Warren and Timothy J. Fogarty compiled documented financial crimes committed by American Catholic priests in the last six decades. They looked at environmental and personal factors, aiming to understand how parish pastors and administrators can be tempted into large-scale theft from their parishes. The scholars’ findings were published in the January-June issue of the Journal of Forensic and Investigative Accounting.
More than half of the cases studied showed that priests spent stolen or misappropriated funds “primarily to support a lavish lifestyle.”
Priests who steal often rationalize their conduct, the report said, with a kind of “moral licensing” — believing that taking parish money, or using it for personal benefit, was justifiable self-compensation for hard work, long hours, or even a more general lack of remuneration or appreciation for other good behavior.
