Betrayal

The Reverend Mark Sorvillo cut an extravagant figure—dining at expensive restaurants, shopping at luxury stores. It took a sting to prove he was stealing from his parishioners

(page 3 of 5)

Over time, people in the parish noticed that Sorvillo enjoyed the finer things in life. He led parishioners on trips to Europe, where he invariably chose expensive restaurants. He had tickets to Notre Dame football games and to Lyric Opera productions. He threw elaborate Christmas parties in the rectory for the choir. He used his extensive collection of fine china and crystal for these occasions, serving vintage wines and Godiva chocolates. "Still, it was hard to believe that your parish priest would be using your money for these kinds of things," says Cunniff. "There was a basic trust there, although over time the trust started to wear thin."

Sorvillo's sister was married to Frank Fiascki, a stockbroker, and they lived in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. Family money, parishioners believed, explained how Sorvillo could indulge his expensive tastes.

"I knew it wasn't true," says McGuire. When Sorvillo's mother died in the late 1990s, he asked the finance committee if he could borrow $8,900 to cover funeral expenses until he received his mother's insurance money. He paid the money back. "This wasn't a con," says McGuire. "My wife and I went to his mother's funeral. There didn't appear to be big family money."

Between 1999 and 2000, St. Margaret Mary's finances became more confused than ever. Control was in the hands of Sorvillo. His finance committee chair was James Brockhagen, who owned the Pinewood Tavern on Touhy Avenue and at the time also worked as the paid business manager of St. Jerome parish in East Rogers Park. "We had no access to any real records," says finance committee member Dooley. "No receipts. We'd get a piece of paper that said, 'Food and rectory expenses: $55,000 annually.' And we'd say, 'OK, what are we spending this on?' Never an answer. It drove us nuts. The hidden truth was we were hemorrhaging money."

Reached by phone, Brockhagen says, "I have no interest in talking about any of this. It was a long time ago."

By 2000, Sorvillo had a lot to hide. According to the state's attorney's office, he had discovered a secret parish money-market account that had been opened by his predecessor for capital expenses. Neither the finance committee nor the archdiocese knew of this account. Sorvillo began to inflate its balance, primarily depositing bequests to the parish. He wrote 98 checks against this account, totaling more than $138,000; he used the money to pay his credit-card bills—including charges at Bloomingdale's and for opera tickets and the rental of a summer home in Wisconsin.

Around this time, he met James Sosnicki, a 20-something married man. Sosnicki lived in Louisville, Kentucky, but he traveled to Chicago to work as a stripper in gay clubs such as Cocktail and Man's Country. Sorvillo and Sosnicki met at a gay bar in Andersonville. Later, Sosnicki would claim that their relationship was never sexual but that Sorvillo had paid him $1,000 a month, had given him presents, and had taken him on trips. "He was like an uncle to me," Sosnicki would tell investigators. (Sosnicki currently works as a carpet cleaner in Louisville, but his phone has been disconnected.)

In August 2000, the secret money-market account was discovered by the Archdiocese of Chicago after St. Margaret Mary's finance committee complained to the administration about Sorvillo's spending and his lack of recordkeeping. Sorvillo responded by saying that he had thrown away all his bank records and receipts. His superiors admonished him and gave him a copy of the archdiocese's pamphlet Business Administration—Best Practices. From that point, Sorvillo's spending only escalated. About the same time that he received a leadership award from the Rogers Park Community Council in 2001, Sorvillo was using parish funds to buy Sosnicki an Acura. The pastor also wrote about the Enron debacle in the church's weekly newsletter, saying, "The web of deceit, rampant corruption, and pervasive lying which extends to the very board room is shocking. . . . How can anyone be so completely selfish, one wonders."

Then Sorvillo bought Sosnicki a Dell computer and a motorcycle. He also ran up expensive restaurant bills on the parish's credit cards, dining at Bice, Frontera Grill, Coco Pazzo, and Gibsons. The only time the spending slowed was in December 2003, when Sorvillo ended up at a hospital emergency room with chest pains. With his weight then up to 400 pounds, he took a leave of absence for gastric-bypass surgery. Sorvillo resumed his duties as pastor by the spring of 2004.

That was a time of contrasts for Sorvillo. Having lost almost 200 pounds, he felt better and began to buy himself new clothes, including an expensive leather jacket. Some young adults at St. Margaret Mary told their parents they had seen Sorvillo at a gay bar in Lake View. At the same time, his brother-in-law, Frank Fiascki, was found guilty of swindling 23 victims—many of them elderly pensioners—out of $2 million through a Ponzi scheme. The Pennsylvania judge who sentenced Fiascki to 8 to 20 years in prison called him a "calculating con artist." (Kathy Sorvillo Fiascki did not return calls for this article.) "Later we wondered if he had been stealing money to send to his sister," says McGuire, "but it turned out he was sending her only $100 a month. He spent more than that every time he ate dinner out."

In the summer, Sorvillo and Sosnicki took a trip to New York, paid for by parish funds, where they saw Broadway plays. In August 2004, Sorvillo ran up a $607 bill at Le Bernardin, a four-star restaurant in New York. The next night, the tab at Jean Georges, another four-star establishment, was $927.

"You have to understand that, at the same time, we are always being told by Mark that we are not raising enough money, that the school is in dire trouble, that the church needs more funds," says Cunniff. Sorvillo asked several parishioners to stand up at Mass and share their personal histories of the parish with everyone and then ask their fellow Catholics to donate more money. "He used people everyone respected to try to wring more money out of the parish," says Dooley. "There were rumors about his spending and a lot of suspicions," says Cunniff, "but he still might have gotten away with all of this if he hadn't tried to close the school."

* * *