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

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The following week was a busy one. Another meeting was held in the school gym (by then the athletic director had new keys). Overwhelmingly, people wanted the school to stay open; it was decided that a committee would meet with the archdiocese. People also wanted a full accounting of parish finances; three former heads of the finance committee—Dan McGuire, Bill O'Connor, and James Nally—were asked to conduct an operational audit. And they wanted a special bank account set up for donations to the school—one to which only the school board would have access. A pledge program was started, and families promised that all the current students would return the next year. Plans were formulated for a toddler play group and an enlarged preschool and kindergarten. And Cunniff left word on Sorvillo's voice mail that the operational audit committee and the school board wanted a meeting with him the evening he returned from Hawaii.

At that meeting, a delegation from the parish, which included the state's attorney, Richard Devine, presented its demands: that a new principal be found for the school; that Brockhagen step down as finance chairman; and that the plan for the charter school be abandoned. Sorvillo agreed.

In January 2005, the operational audit committee produced its interim report. It detailed wild fluctuations in the weekly cash collections from services, extensive credit-card abuse, and poor financial recordkeeping. McGuire, O'Connor, and Nally—now being called the Three Amigos around the parish—also discovered that Sorvillo had inflated his salary by $1,000 a month (the amount he had been paying to Sosnicki for his company), had pocketed "stole fees" (money given for baptisms, weddings, and funerals), and had written checks from a special parish account for long-term goals to cover his own credit-card bills. The first check he had written from that account was for $10,000 to Marshall Field's. Also, every Monday, Sorvillo made a cash deposit to his own personal checking account—which explained why the Sunday collections were always so low.

"It was flagrant," says McGuire. "He just took and took and took." McGuire says that the audit committee didn't find evidence linking Sorvillo to Sosnicki. "We didn't get the answer to everything; we found enough to see that there were terrible problems and that it needed to be turned over to the archdiocese."

The archdiocese put Sorvillo on probation. A new system was put in place for Sunday collections. In the end, an audit concluded that Sorvillo had stolen more than $40,000 in cash from the collection plates.

For most of 2005, Sorvillo's spending was under control. After all, he had no more credit cards and no more easy access to the cash collections. But in December, the bank bags for Christmas Eve, traditionally one of the most heavily attended and most profitable services of the year, showed almost no cash from the collections. "It was ridiculously unbelievable that there would be no cash from the Christmas Eve Masses," says Dooley. Somehow, Sorvillo had managed to circumvent all the parishioners' precautions. Dooley says the finance committee immediately complained to the archdiocese but was told to "wait a week or two" to see what would happen next. "That's when we decided we had to devise our own sting operation," says Dooley. Starting with the collections on January 22, 2006, serial numbers on the bank bags were secretly recorded. That day's bags showed new serial numbers—an indication that the bags had been switched. "We informed the archdiocese, and we were told to do it again another week," says Dooley. "And then another week." Continuing through February 12th, the bags turned in to the bank had different serial numbers on them.

On February 14th, Sorvillo was called to a meeting at the archdiocese's downtown office and confronted with the four weeks of evidence. He admitted he had opened the bags, taken out the cash, and put the remaining checks in a new bag, forging the ushers' signatures. At the time, he estimated he had misappropriated about $10,000 of parish funds, a statement the state's attorney's office would later call a "gross underestimate." Sorvillo was relieved of priestly duties, meaning he was no longer allowed to conduct sacraments, and he was told to leave St. Margaret Mary without packing up his belongings. He moved into the St. Joachim rectory on the South Side, where a longtime friend from the seminary was the pastor.

The state's attorney's investigation continued throughout the spring and summer of 2006. "This is a complicated, layered case that took a great deal of time and energy," says Scott Cassidy, the supervisor of the special prosecutions unit.

Law enforcement officials uncovered Sorvillo's relationship with Sosnicki. In the belongings Sorvillo had left behind at St. Margaret Mary's rectory were several photos of Sosnicki. One showed him as a finalist in the 2004 International Mr. Leather competition; one showed him standing in front of the rectory's bookcase, a boyish grin on his face; and another showed him naked, sleeping in Sorvillo's rectory bed.

In October 2006, the state's attorney's office charged Sorvillo with felony theft. He spent a day in jail and then was out after posting 10 percent of his $100,000 bond. His mug shot made the papers, and the next week at the St. Margaret Mary Halloween party, an adult parishioner appeared with the mug shot blown up and turned into a mask. Completing his costume were a sports coat with fake money springing out of all the pockets, a Robin Hood-style hat, and big shopping bags from Bloomingdale's.

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On a Sunday morning in July, the temperature at St. Margaret Mary is not too high yet, which is good since the church is not air-conditioned. The 10 a.m. Mass is full, and before the service starts, the pews are abuzz with news about Sorvillo. The Sun-Times had printed a photo of Sosnicki that morning, along with its coverage of the former pastor's sentencing. Parishioners recognize that Sosnicki was standing in the living quarters of their rectory.

The Mass proceeds without incident. The choir sings; the homily is based on the New Testament story of Martha and Mary. Then, at the closing, Father Hal Murphy reads a note from the current pastor, the Reverend James Barrett, who is vacationing in Ireland. "Many of us anticipated that our parish's nightmare had ended with his plea bargain, confession, and sentencing," says the note from Barrett. "Unfortunately, other information about Father Sorvillo has come to light. . . . It is our fervent hope that the storm clouds of scandal will eventually pass from St. Margaret Mary's parish and that together, with God's help, we can begin the process of rebuilding the morale of our community."