By Gretchen Keiser

An independent audit of the archdiocese of Atlanta shows that archdiocesan funds were not misused on behalf of Victoria Long while Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, headed the archdiocese.

From May 1, 1988, when the archbishop was installed, through Aug. 31, 1990, the audit found only one previously unidentified expenditure of $47 on her behalf in August 1989.

The audit also verified, as had been announced by the archdiocese earlier, that medical bills amounting to slightly less than $15,000 were paid to doctors or institutions for her in the summer of 1990, when her involvement with the archbishop became known to the archdiocese.

"The audit clearly shows that the archbishop did not use the funds of the archdiocese of Atlanta to assist Vicki Long," said Bishop James P. Lyke, OFM, apostolic administrator of the archdiocese, in an interview.

Of three parishes audited, a total of $6,540 in payments on her behalf was revealed. The bishop received a report Dec. 13 from an independent commission of four, headed by Donald R. Keough, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Coca-Cola Co. The commission was named in August to oversee an unrestricted audit of the archdiocese and several parishes to determine whether funds were misused for Ms. Long's benefit.

The audit was conducted by Coopers & Lybrand, independent certified public accountants and took 1,500 hours, reviewing over 30,000 checks, according to the commission.

The audit covered only archdiocesan accounts and did not in any way review the personal funds or accounts of Archbishop Marino.

The $47 item turned up on a monthly bill from a florist, detailing a long list of complementary items sent from the archbishop's office to a variety of people. Ms. Long's item was a fruit basket, with the office notation "illness" alongside it.

Of the three parishes audited, one, St. Jude's in Sandy Springs, had no funds expended on behalf of Ms. Long during the time frame considered.

The two others, St. Pius X in Conyers, and St. John the Evangelist in Hapeville, showed funds paid to her or on her behalf from parish charity funds.

At St. Pius X a total of $1,345 was expended, $1,075 to Ms. Long and $270 to pay a doctor's bill she owed in July, 1989. The funds paid to her are broken down into checks for $500 on Aug. 31, 1987; $225 on Sept. 30, 1987; $250 on Aug. 11, 1988; and $100 on Feb. 13, 1989.

The amount revealed by the audit coincides with the amount disclosed by St. Pius X pastor, Father John Walsh, in early September after Bishop Lyke formed the commission and announced the audit. Father Walsh came forward at the time to say he had assisted Ms. Long from the parish "Good Samaritan" fund several times over a two-year period without realizing that she was getting help from anyone else.

At St. John the Evangelist parish in Hapeville, the audit revealed that a total of $5,195 was paid on Ms. Long's behalf from the parish St. Vincent de Paul Society fund for charity cases over a 28-month period from May 1986, the month she joined the parish officially, through September 1988.

Two checks, one for $100 and one for $85 were written to Ms. Long in 1986. The rest were paid to third parties on her behalf, including eight payments toward apartment rent ranging from $395 to $440, a hospital bill for $118 in April 1987, a utility payment of $100 to Georgia Power in April 1987, and five occasions in 1987 or 1988 when credit or loan payments were made on her behalf, totaling $1,095.

A number of miscellaneous payments on her behalf totaled $317.

The parishes of St. John and St. Jude were audited because Father Michael Woods, who acknowledged in August having had an illicit relationship with Ms. Long in the past, had served as pastor of both at different times.

The audit covered the time from Ms. Long's registration at Hapeville through Father Woods' reassignment to St. Jude's, and then reviewed St. Jude's books from the time of his assignment there until Aug. 31, 1990, following his resignation as pastor.

While the funds were taken from the parish St. Vincent de Paul account, Sheila Bissonnette, executive director of the Society, said it was done on the "insistence of the pastor," Father Woods.

"Needless to say, no member of the Society was aware of the relationship between Father Woods and Vicki Long, other than that he was her pastor," Ms. Bissonnette said. "As pastor he directed SVDP to assist her on several occasions over a period of two years. The type of assistance provided is typical of the assistance people receive from the Society, in that our highest expenditures are assisting people with rent, followed by food and utilities."

She added that "it is not standard practice to write out checks directly to clients or to pay on credit cards. However, in extenuating circumstances, this is done. In this case, it was the insistence of the pastor that the aid be given from the Society's funds."

The commission, made up of Keough, Alan Pinado, a Clark-Atlanta University business school professor, Ronald Seder, a retired IBM director, and Michael Trapp, a CPA and managing partner of Ernst and Young, gave a three page document to Bishop Lyke concluding their task.

In a brief interview, Keough called the investigation by the auditing firm "massive," and said the scope was expanded several times at the request of the commission to investigate possible avenues of misuse, but revealed nothing further.

One expansion of the scope of the audit was the polling of all priests in the archdiocese to determine whether any other parishes had assisted Ms. Long financially to their knowledge.

"We traveled every possible lead and frankly at the end of the study two things were evident," Keough told The Georgia Bulletin. "One is that the audit itself confirmed what Bishop Lyke said at the outset" that there was no evidence archdiocesan funds were misused. "Thoroughly examining the three parishes in question" revealed that "a modest amount was spent on Vicki Long," he said.

"While we don't want to minimize the results of what happened, I think the people of the archdiocese can be quite pleased that the archdiocese has handled this in a fundamentally responsible manner," Keough said.

The commission members said internal audits usually reveal needed improvements in financial controls and "this case is no exception," suggesting that improvements could be made in the area of parish-based accounting and financial controls. They deferred to Bishop Lyke for consideration of any specific changes.

Bishop Lyke said he had asked Michael McNamara, chief financial officer of the archdiocese, to make recommendations to him on improved methods of accountability. However, he also said that the auditors found, at the archdiocesan level, "overall a very good accounting system in place."

Ironically, the audit itself cost the archdiocese $84,500, a fee that represented a 50 percent discount given the church by Coopers & Lybrand the commission and the bishop said.

"While this is a large sum of money and while this represents monies that I would have rather used for the many needs we have in the archdiocese and for our ministries to the poor, I consider it a comparatively small amount in comparison to maintaining our integrity and credibility with regard to our use of archdiocesan funds," the bishop said.

Archbishop Marino resigned in July, 1990 as archbishop of Atlanta, citing physical and emotional stresses, but within a month, after press accounts acknowledged that he had been confronted by Catholic Church authorities with information that he had had an "intimate relationship" with Ms. Long.